In Her Dreams
by artsoccer
Summary: For as long as a 17 year old Emma Swan can remember, in her dreams she has lived in another world called Imontar. In this world she is a hero and fights monsters, warlords, and evil wizards along side her best friend. But as Emma starts to realize the girl in her dreams is the girl of her dreams, the line between reality and dream blurs beyond recognition. Is any of it a dream?
1. The Real World is Heart Breaking

**I don't own Once Upon A Time or Avatar**

 **Before you ask the third person narrator in this story who uses terms such as "You" and "I" is me, artsoccer AKA the author, _not_ an official character in the story (I like to put myself into my work)**

* * *

It had been years since people had stopped staring at Blue Fox's ears with a mix of horror and confusion. (Blue Fox is human, just saying). These days they generally looked at her ears with a sense of hope and relief. The ears of Blue Fox were quite predictably, blue fox ears. The ears of Emma Swan are far more human, just slightly tinted blue at the top. Despite this, Emma Swan felt far more fear at the prospect of her boyfriend, Neal, seeing the tips of her ears for the first time, than Blue Fox had ever felt at showing her ears for the first time.

'Of course,' Emma tries to reason with herself, 'When Fox first became Blue Fox she was ten, and ten year olds tend to be far more fearless than almost 18 year olds. 'Sides Blue Fox is just in my dreams.' Emma knew in her heart that Blue Fox is far more real than any dream; the blue tint in the tips of her ears was proof of that... or so Dragon Jacket tried to claim, but Dragon Jacket would claim such foolishness.

Emma reasons with herself even further, 'Neal loves me, he would _never_ leave me.' She doesn't care that within her dreams Dragon Jacket constantly warned her about him. 'She's just jealous, and more importantly, just the girl of my... _IN_ my dreams...' Emma is jolted back to the present by the feeling of Neal pulling her hair behind one of her ears.

"Is this why you've never let me play with your hair before now?" Neal whispers.

The feeling of his hot breath so close to her ear causes Emma to shiver.

"I didn't know how you'd react." Emma explains, almost breathless.

"I love it," Neal nibbles the tip of Emma's ear, "Just as I love every part of you."

A few love and lust filled hours later, Emma Swan falls asleep as she listens to her lover's, sleep induced, deep breaths.

* * *

In another world, at the exact moment that Emma Swan falls fast asleep, a hero by the name of Blue Fox wakes up in a bed. The bed is in a small room within a relatively seedy Inn with a Feudal Europe vibe about it. The Inn goes by the name _Olim_ **[1]**. There is nothing unusual about this; Blue Fox and her partner Dragon Jacket often sleep in seedy Inns whilst on jobs. Or rather, nothing unusual except the fact that Blue Fox is alone in the bed.

Don't get this wrong, the relationship between the two girls is completely platonic. Blue Fox and Dragon Jacket are friends, the best of friends, but definitely not a couple, not even friends with benefits.

Blue Fox got up with a sigh as she remembered that Dragon Jacket had left the night before to go on an independent 'job'. Blue Fox thought about what her friend might be up to. 'It was normal to miss one's best friend this much, right?' Blue Fox wonders. **[2]** As Blue goes about her morning routine, she can't help but think of her friend, Dragon. The 18 year old that stood 5'4", and had brown-green eyes (depending on the light), straight auburn hair that goes just past shoulder length, her two scars, the diagonal one going across her right cheek and the horizontal one crossing her neck (Blue has never actually learned the story behind either of the scars, but Dragon has had them since before the girls first met) and her signature blood/dragon red jacket.

Blue had to remind herself several times that morning that, A: she had a wonderful boyfriend named Neal, and B: she was straight, very, very _straight_ (like a bendy ruler ;). Blue sighed, again as she contemplated the girl who looked back at her in the mirror. Picture an 18 year old Emma Swan minus the glasses and instead of normal ears, pointy fox like blue ones (some say that her ears look more like blue elf ears... idiots...) and a blue tipped nose. She touched the fox pendent the hung around her neck. Emma Swan had been given that when she was five by a former foster sister. The foster sister had told Emma that as long as she was as clever as a fox, she could always survive whatever the world threw her way. So maybe said foster sister said it a bit more eloquently (you get the idea), and she had been talking about the real world and not this weird dream world, but regardless it was the almost 18 year olds' most prized possession.

* * *

"Fuck!" Dragon Jacket cussed for like the gazilioth time that day, and it was only like 8:15 in the morning. And she had woken up like 25 minutes ago.

Dragon Jacket downright hated the weather in the country of Avalon. (The weather in Avalon is comparable to the weather of England). It never stopped raining. And as we all (should) know, excessive rain leads to excessive mud.

"I fucking hate this damn mud." Apparently in Dragon's case excessive mud also leads to excessive swearing.

Worse, Dragon forgot to bring a tent, she just spent the night open to the elements on the cold wet ground. She can't even get a stupid fire going. So, I suppose that Dragon has every right to be cranky.

"Why did I take this fucking solo almost damn worthless job in such a shitty place again?!" Dragon asks, rhetorically.

Dragon does, however, know the answer.

"This so would have been better if I could have been able to complain with Blue!"

And in that comment lies the problem. Dragon Jacket knows full well why she didn't ask Blue to come with. It's very simple; Dragon Jacket is head over heels in love with her best friend, Blue Fox. And lately, Blue Fox won't shut the hell up about this _boy_ , not even a _girl_ , that Blue claims to be completely in love with. Worse still, this boy exists in what Blue claims to be the "real world" and that Dragon's entire world, and Dragon herself is nothing more than a series of complex dreams. Well, Dragon knows that to be complete Bull Shit. That's right, with a capital B&S.

To be fair, Dragon Jacket is completely correct in the fact that herself and the world that she lives in is completely real, and far more than Emma Swan's dream world that her subconscious created for her to escape the harsh reality of the foster system. How Emma/Blue Fox is able to coexist in these different worlds, well for now think of it like the movie _Avatar_ , you know the one with the blue aliens.

* * *

 **[1] If you translate this from Latin into English, I think you'll find my name choice amusing (don't bother translating any thing else, it's either English or made up)  
**

 **[2] From this point on, I am mainly going to refer to Blue Fox and Dragon Jacket by just their first names**


	2. A few important basics

Before going any further with the story I must explain how names work in this world. But even before that, the world is called Imontar. Back to the names thing... In Imontar, the term "real name(s)" does not exist. Every person has two names, their given or "True Name" and their "Chosen Name". Their True Name consists of two parts, a first, personal name given by the person's parents and as second/last familial name. When most people reach the age of 10, they chose a new name for themselves, their Chosen Name. Most people chose to keep their familial name as their last name.

The reasoning for this is because in Imontar, True Names have power. If you know someone's True Name and are not a part of that person's immediate family, you have complete power/control over that person. Outside of home with their family, a person's True Name is never spoken. To tell someone outside of your family your True Name is a sign that you absolutely trust them, this is something lovers often do during Imontar's equivalent of a wedding night.


	3. What's in a Name?

**I don't... wait, the disclaimer is in my summery...**

* * *

As it would turn out, much to Dragon Jacket's dismay, the solo job she had taken was in Altin, not Avalon. The messenger who had come with the job had been drunk and confused.

"Damn it!" Dragon cursed for the umpteenth time that hour.

As taxing as it is to transport oneself with magic is, it is at least three times as bad if one has to do it twice within 24 hours. As it would happen Altin was several thousand miles and an ocean away from Avalon (think of it like the distance between California {West Coast USA} and Japan). Not quite the other side of the world, but still.

Five agonizing and exhausting minutes later, magical transport is not instantaneous if the distance being traveled is in excess of twenty miles as the crow flies, a very annoyed and exhausted self made hero, by the name Dragon Jacket, arrived in the mountainous region named Altin.

Much to Dragon's dismay, the job itself turns out to be far harder and more important than the drunken messenger had proclaimed. Instead of a relatively easy to kill and or negotiate with Minatare, she had a Medusa to kill. In other words instead of something easily taken out from a far with an arrow or easily convinced to leave with a bar of chocolate (depending on the Minatare's mood), Dragon had to kill a very dangerous monster by cutting its head off without looking at it or touching it and the best way to kill a Medusa is with a sword, quite possibly the only weapon Dragon Jacket didn't have on her. And aside from that, Dragon had faced off against a Medusa once before, one time to many, she hated Medusas.

Blue Fox pulls herself together, packs the small amount of belongings that she had with her and heads into the Inn's Tavern for breakfast. As Blue looked over the meager menu, she mused that the pitiful breakfast food that she was about to be served would end up being grossly overpriced. Blue supposed that was because she wasn't from around there (Aka from out of that small town).

Blue ponders the weird mash up that is Imontar. Imontar is like you took Feudal Europe and crossed it with modern day Western countries in our world, but without guns or anything that requires gun powder because gun powder has never been invented/discovered in Imontar.

You can walk down the main street in any small town in Imontar and see side by side, a blacksmith, the Inn/Tavern, a cobbler, the guy who puts the horse shoes on the horses (wait, that's the blacksmith), a plumber and electrician. The entire world is run on a cross between electricity, ye oldie stuff, and magic. There are no cars. Transportation is done on foot, by horse, by sail boat, by magic, for some lucky fools by dragon, and they've been working on a magical technological hybrid device that essentially beams you to places, like the transporter from Star Trek.

Weapons are another curious thing in Imontar, Blue Fox muses, you've got your bows, Long, Recurve and Cross, some with poisoned arrows, some with magic. You've also got swords and knives (lots of various types of knives), daggers (not sure what the difference between knives and daggers are, but I think it has something to do with length...). For the stealthier, you have things akin to Ninja throwing stars. Some people chose to use staffs, long thick smoothed off sticks, essentially, but in the hands of a master, deadly. And then you have weapons akin to Tasers, and like the Tasers of our world they only stun.

Just like Dragon Jacket, Blue Fox is practically armed to the teeth. Actually, upon reflection, Blue thinks that Dragon might actually have a weapon hidden in her teeth... *I shall neither confirm nor deny that opinion at this time*. Neither girl carries a sword. Both of them feel that swords tend to be too bulky.

Blue is jolted from her musing and her food by the sound of cries for help coming from just outside of town. Her blue fox ears have given her greatly increased hearing. Blue drops her fork and runs towards the source of the screams without a second thought.

Blue arrives at the scene mere seconds after the cries for help have stopped. At the scene, there is a young man, no more than fifteen years old Blue estimates; too young to be on his own at any rate. He is lying prone upon the ground. There is a trickle of blood coming from underneath his dirty blond hair.

Blue Fox checks his pulse, to her relief, there is one. She starts trying to wake the unconscious boy up. She gently shakes him.

"Hey, wake up." Blue whispers to the lad.

After a good twenty-thirty seconds, he opens his eyes.

"Good morning" Blue says a bit cheekily.

"Wha-what happened?" the boy weakly inquires.

"I was hoping you could tell me that." Blue admits, "A minute ago you were yelling for help, and when I got here, you're laying on the ground with a nasty bump on your head... speaking of which..."

Blue Fox places her right hand over the boy's injury and mutters a basic first aid spell. Blue is suddenly very grateful (again, not that she'd ever admit it) that Dragon Jacket had insisted that she learn how to do a rudimentary healing spell, that and a basic shield spell, the only two spells that she had let Dragon teach her.

"Do you think you can tell me what happened now?" Blue asks once she finishes the spell.

"I was walking into town, I guess my money belt was a bit too obvious." the boy answers with a bit of a groan, the healing spell wasn't the best, "I was also not paying any attention to my surroundings. I was a bit distracted."

"Happens to the best of us." Blue says comfortingly.

"And somebody attacked me. They got away with my money belt and my horse." The boy grumbles.

"How much did they get away with?" Blue asks.

"All I had, over 500 quads." the boy answers. (500 quads are roughly equivalent to $3,100).

Blue lets out a whistle. "Any particular reason you were coming to this town with so much money?"

"My parents just died." the boy lets out a little sob, "I was coming to live with my uncle."

"How about this," Blue suggests "You head into town and try to find your uncle and I'll track down the mugger with your money."

"But how will you find him, he has a horse?!" the boy protests.

"Haven't you heard?" Blue asks teasingly, "Blue Fox always gets her pray."

The boy's god smacked expression at the knowledge that he just met the famous Blue Fox is the last thing Blue sees before she turns around and bounds into the forest after the thief. Well the last thing she sees before the staring into the forest at any rate.


	4. A Number of Ways to Die

Blue Fox starts tracking the thief through the forest, considering that he took a horse with him it was a very easy process. Dispute a horse's speed and endurance, Blue knows that she can pick her way through the forest with greater ease than a horse can. So Blue is confident that she will catch the mugger by night fall.

A good three-three and a half, hours of tracking and chasing through dense underbrush later Blue Fox is starting to think that she was a bit hasty when she started to chase this guy. She has a couple of reasons for feeling this way; one: her pace has slowed down considerably (on the bright side, the horse's pace has also seemed to slow down), two: she is getting tired (not that she'd ever admit that to Dragon Jacket when they meet back up in a few days), and three: her stomach just growled (Blue never finished her breakfast...).

Blue starts to get the feeling that she is better off resting for like two hours finding something to eat for lunch, finding something to drink and getting a little shut eye (like a nap). Blue knows that she can catch up to the guy when he stops for the night, and if he lights a fire, she might be able to skip his trail and just follow her nose.

* * *

Upon her arrival in the little town in Altin that is being terrorized by a Medusa, and exhausted Dragon Jacket rents a room in the local Inn and sleeps for the next two to three hours. Upon awakening, Dragon searches the town for a sword to use to slay the Medusa. This turns out to be harder than expected. Apparently the town had already lost ten, sorry eleven brave/stupid men and two brave/stupid girls to the monster. Because of this the blacksmith had flat out stopped making swords in order to discourage the people of the town from killing themselves in attempts to slay the Medusa.

"There are no swords in this entire damn little town!" Dragon laments as she heads in to the Inn's Tavern for some lunch.

Dragon decides to order the most expensive thing on the menu.

"I might as well treat myself to decent last meal." She mutters disheartened as she digs in.

Dragon really didn't like her odds against the Medusa, especially as she began to count the ways it could kill her.

'1: I could look at it a turn to stone.

'2: It could scratch me with its poisoned claws.

'3: Its acidic blood could permanently injure if not kill me... dying is permanent...

'4: It could fling me really hard against a wall or floor or pillar of stalagmite or stalactite or the ceiling...

'5: One of its head-snakes could bite me and its venom could would paralyze me, leaving me to die of thirst

'And the only way I can kill it is by cutting its head off. And once I cut its head off, I have to burn the head to ashes without looking at any part of the Medusa and without touching any of its spilt blood. As far as the burning of the head goes, I have fire spells, for the rest of it, I am so dead.'

Dragon would have to go into the Medusa's underground lair, blindfolded. Don't let the ancient Greek myths fool you; even looking at a Medusa's reflection is enough to petrify someone. At least last time she had faced a Medusa, Blue had been with Dragon and both girls had been armed with swords. On the other hand, if she did beat the Medusa there was rather heavy purse waiting for her has payment. You know a money purse ;).

"It always comes back to Blue, doesn't it?" Dragon mutters rather morosely as she steels herself to face the Medusa.

Before she was ready, Dragon Jacket was standing in front of the entrance to the Medusa's lair sword less and with a blindfold in hand. To be fair, when she would be ready could be classified as never. Dragon sighs, puts the blindfold on, zips up her jacket (yes there are zippers in Imontar) draws her two longest blades and takes her first step towards the Medusa.

What feels like hours (17 minutes), three 'statues' and a near panic attack later, Dragon hears the first sign that she's not the only living being in the cave. It's a voice. It is the kind of voice that belongs to a beautiful woman. 'So beautiful must this woman be', Dragon thinks to herself, 'That she could not possibly the ugly Medusa.'

"Another brave hero come for the dreaded Medusa?" the voice had said, "For your sake, I hope you're not as stupid as the others."

Dragon is almost tempted to put down her knives and remove her blindfold so that she can gaze upon this evidently beautiful woman. But just in the nick of time, Dragon hears a hiss of a snake, several hisses actually. All of these hisses are coming from the exact same place that the voice had come from. 'Her head-snakes!' Dragon realizes with a jolt.

"Does your hair always hiss when you're lying?" Dragon responds, teasingly.

"So maybe you're not as stupid as the others." it sounds as if the Medusa is grinning, "But you were still stupid enough to come after me."

Mid-sentence, the Medusa lunges towards Dragon, claws forward, claws that are rumored to be razor sharp. Dragon dodges out of the way, choosing not to block with her knives, lest she nick the Medusa and cause its acidic blood spill everywhere. Dragon doesn't dodge fast or far enough. She feels the Medusa's razor sharp poisonous claws rake down her right shoulder.

Or rather she feels the claws rake down the right shoulder of her jacket. Dragon does not feel the claws penetrate her shoulder, with good reason; they don't even scratch her jacket, let alone her. 'Score one for me and my dragon blood soaked jacket', Dragon thinks gratefully. 'Although my shoulder will probably end up a little bruised...'

"I don't die that easily!" Dragon boasts, aloud.

The Medusa only growls in response.

Dragon swings one of her blades in the general direction of the Medusa's neck. The Medusa howls in pain, letting Dragon know she made a direct hit. Dragon senses, rather than hears the Medusa lunging back towards her. The Medusa charges in head first. Dragon has her two knives one in each hand. She holds them crossed at the hilt. As the Medusa advances, Dragon thrusts the blades forward. When Dragon feels the blades make contact with the Medusa's neck, she pulls them apart and successfully takes its head off.

Dragon knows that she has taken the head off as she hears to distinct thuds. One is slightly quieter and is accompanied by a mass of hissing from angry head-snakes (this is why the head needs to be burned, if not burned within twenty-four hours, the snakes from the head of a 'dead' Medusa will split off and form one new Medusa from every snake. There are hundreds of snakes on a head of any given Medusa). The second and louder thud is from the body falling over without any mind to direct to remain upright.

Dragon probes the area where she heard the head fall with the blade in her right hand. It is the longer of the two blades, not by much, but a half inch might make all the difference between whether or not one of the head snakes can bite her. The increased volume of the hissing tells her when she has found the head.

Dragon Jacket quickly sets three different fire spells upon the head. One is for starting a camp fire, another is for lighting a building (the arson spell, as Dragon likes to call it), and the third was for creating a fire ball. After the fire dies down, Dragon, carefully places her hand in the spot where the head was and finds nothing but ashes. Dragon lets out a sigh of relief before turn towards the exit of the cave.

It isn't until Dragon has walked a good five minutes from the Medusa's corpse that she risks removing her blindfold. Some sources say that even the dead headless body of a Medusa is ugly enough to turn men (or women) to stone.

Roughly twelve to thirteen minutes later, Dragon emerges from the cave to find the towns people surrounding the entrance waiting to see if she would return. As she exits, Dragon can see that the people are still waiting for something.

"It is dead!" Dragon announces.

As a whole, the people let out a sigh of relief and release their held breaths as one. All of a sudden, the crowd erupts into wild cheers. They are cheering for Dragon Jacket, the hero.

'I'm a hero.' Dragon thinks with a smile as she accepts the praise, 'I'm really truly a hero.'


	5. A Cold Blooded Killing

**Sorry for the update delay, my mom dragged me into a last minute vacation**

* * *

Blue Fox wakes up from her nap. During her nap, Blue did not awaken in the 'real' world as Emma Swan. She rarely, if ever, switches worlds during naps. Blue uses the position of the sun to estimate that she had been asleep for about two hours. Her stomach growls, it reminds her that she hasn't eaten in several hours.

Blue cocks her ears and to her surprise, and delight, she hears a stream not too far away. By the sound of it, the stream can't be more than a mile or two away. Spurred on by her thirst and hope to locate some fish, Blue goes after it.

She is in luck, not only does the stream provide drinkable water, but Blue spots some edible fish within the waters. Blue takes a few minutes to quench her thirst before attempting to catch a fish. It takes her twenty-five attempts and over a half an hour to catch one.

Blue decides that she has given the mugger too much time to get away. She comes to the decision that she does not have time to make a fire and cook the fish. 'I suppose that this is as good a time as any to find out if I like sushi.' Blue musses as she lifts the dead and raw fish to her mouth. She suddenly decides that she is not hungry, not hungry at all.

Blue Fox casts her eyes down river. To her surprise, Blue sees what looks like a man leading a horse down to the stream out of the same forest that she was just trekking through. 'This could be him!' Blue thinks, excitedly. Deciding to throw caution into the wind, "somewhat stupidly", as Blue is sure Dragon would say, Blue starts running down the river bank toward the man and the horse.

Either the man is not scared, has nothing to fear, is very stupid, or just doesn't know that she's coming for him, because the man's body language does not in any way indicate that he has noticed Blue Fox bearing down on him. It occurs to Blue Fox that she should have gotten a description of the man and or the horse before running off after them. Again, Blue hears Dragon Jacket calling her stupid in her head.

Luckily for Blue Fox, she is downwind of the man of the horse and their sent is carried to her. Her hearing isn't the only sense that Blue has got that is reminiscent of a fox's. Her hearing capabilities are also beyond that of a human's. The smell from the pair is reminiscent of the sent that she got off of the boy. 'This is who I'm after!' Blue thinks, triumphantly, 'Not so stupid, am I, Dragon? ...Why am I talking to her in my head? She's not even here...'

Seconds later, Blue is jumping onto the man.

"Give me the money you stole!" she shouts at him.

"Breh gah mhmnm." The man moans.

"In some form of Common Tongue!" Blue demands.

In Imontar there is a Common Tongue that is every traveler and Tavern/Inn keeper and anyone else who deals with travelers knows. Every land has its own dialect or strain of the Common Tongue that is unique to that area. This is similar to Latin based languages such as German, Italian and Spanish being similar to each other, but these dialects are much more similar.

"Mep moff meh!" the man mutters.

It is then that Blue realizes that she is smothering the man and he can't talk, at least not clearly. She gets off of him and pulls him to her chest and places one of her knifes at his throat.

"I'll say this one more time," Blue says in a soft threatening tone of voice, "Give me the stolen money."

"Who do you think you are anyway?" the man says, instead.

"Wrong answer," Blue presses her knife into his throat, not enough to cut the skin, but enough to hurt. "But I'll tell you anyway. I am Blue Fox, now, for the last time, where is the stolen money belt?"

The man gulps at her name, this causes Blue's blade to dig into his throat a little, blood starts to trickle down his neck.

"It's-It's arou-around my waist!" the man stammers out, "Please-please don-don't k-kill me."

"If you're not lying about the stolen money pouch, I might consider your plea." Blue responds in the same low threatening tone.

Blue takes her free hand (you know, the one not pressing a blade to this guy's throat) and shoves it under the man's shirt. She quickly finds the money belt. Blue rips it off of the guy.

"Is the entire 500 quads in here?" Blue asks.

"Y-yes," the man cries, "I swear! Please let me live!"

The man has tears in his eyes. As Blue had been searching for the money belt, she had 'accidentally' drawn her knife slightly deeper into the man's neck.

"Lucky for you," Blue Fox whispers into his ear, "I have this superpower and I can tell when people are lying to me, any you're telling the truth about the money in this pouch."

"Does, does that mean you'll let me live?!" the man prays.

"It means I'm gonna make it quick and relatively painless." In one quick motion, Blue Fox slices the man's neck down to the bone. He dies in less than a tenth of a second.

"I hate swine like you." She mutters to corpse that is now laying on the river bed. "Taking everything from a boy who just lost his family, you're terrible."

Blue goes just upstream of the body and washes his blood off of herself. Before she leaves to take the money and the horse back to the kid, she watches as the blood from the body washes into the river and a little stream of the water turns red.

A couple of hours later, Blue Fox has returned to the village and returned the stolen goods to their rightful owner. Blue sighs as she realizes that she has arrived just in time for the sun set. She has always loved watching the sunset, in both worlds. It's always been calming to her.

Less than two hours after the sun first began to set, Blue ate dinner and retired to the room she was renting at the Inn. She thinks of seeing Neal again and of how Dragon might be doing as she drifts off to sleep.

Emma Swan wakes up beside her first love. She smiles at the thought of what they had done the night before. Then the blissful smile slips from her face as a terrible feeling of foreboding slips over the blond at the thought of the coming day. A feeling of foreboding that will turn out to be well deserved.


	6. What Goes Up

Dragon Jacket let herself bask in the praise of the town in Altin for the rest of the day. She even got a free dinner that night and a free night's rest. Dragon felt like she was on cloud nine, or would have been the next morning as she ate her, yes, free breakfast. Dragon knew that she would have been so much happier if Blue was able to share the moment with her, or maybe even, if Dragon let herself get really carried away in her daydreaming, Blue would kiss her. Dragon shook these thoughts away as she prepares to leave the town.

Dragon magically transports herself to a little known (known only to her) corner of Imontar. This little known corner appears to be nothing more than the base of a random cliff face, but Dragon knows better. She places her hand on a seemingly random spot and mutters something under her breath. For a brief moment, a section of the cliff face around her hand seems to shimmer. When she sees that shimmer, Dragon walks into the cliff.

Dragon hadn't walked through solid rock, she had walked though her carefully concealed entrance to her hidden 'house'. As Dragon walks through the 'house', the lights in hall automatically turn on. Dragon had created this place about five years ago when she was thirteen. Blue had expressed concern that Dragon didn't seem to have anywhere to stay in between adventures. Blue is able (until she turns eighteen at any rate) to stay at the Hero School that had found and raised her since she was a baby.

Hero Schools were created, because of a land filled with magical beasts and humans; well somebody has to know how to protect people. Hero Schools, while originally not intended to be such, are also orphanages of sorts. And as far as age goes if you want to be a hero (typically for hire), if you're at least ten, nobody really cares about how young you are as long as you have the training to be one.

Dragon sighs, as she walks towards the armory, her home (and she uses that word lightly) has everything she could want or need from a home; it's very secure, nobody, not even Blue Fox, excepting herself, knows where it is or how to get in. Also, it's fully equipped a fully functioning kitchen, a 'living room' of sorts (there is no TV {aka TV doesn't exist} in Imontar, fyi), a bathroom complete with shower and bathtub (indoor plumbing is awesome), an armory, a room for weapons practice that is even long enough for short range bow work, a bedroom, a library filled with a few hundred texts with both scrolls and books on a large range of topics (fiction tomes have their own side room), and a study/laboratory in which she can conduct experiments (mainly of the magical sort). Yes, Dragon has everything in this place she could want or need, except someone to love and share it with.

* * *

Emma Swan brushes aside her feeling of foreboding about the day. She tells herself that today will be a good day. Emma certainly had a good night, last night. She sincerely hopes that this happiness will continue. 'Neal loves me.' Emma reminds herself, 'And I love him, and he accepted every part of me last night and we will continue to be happy together.'

Emma spends the next couple of minutes gazing at Neal's sleeping form and getting het negative thoughts completely out of her head. She feels lucky that she only needed a couple of minutes to get her thoughts in order because Neal wakes up only a couple of minutes after she had.

The next few hours of Emma's day go by with Emma feeling happier than she's ever felt. The pinnacle of the happiness seems to happen in the late morning when Neal tells her that he wants the two of them to start over somewhere and lead an honest life with a real home together. Emma should have known, based on her past track record with potential happy homes, that her happiness (and by extension her life) was about to go downhill, fast.

Neal presents Emma with a map of the country and asks her to pick some place for them to live. Emma closes her eyes and randomly places her finger on the map. When she opens her eyes, Emma sees that she has landed on a city in northern Florida.

"Tallahassee" Neal reads the name of the city aloud.

"Is it near a beach?" Emma asks.

"It's Florida," Neal responds, "Everything is near a beach."

Emma grins as she grabs Neal into a hug. It only takes a second or two for Neal to turn their hug into a kiss. Emma thinks that the grin will never leave her face, she's going to find her home, her Tallahassee.

As I said before, Emma should have known that this happiness couldn't last very long at all. It didn't even last an hour. The day wasn't even past noon when Neal had gone into post office and came out, quite quickly, with a frown on his face.

"I didn't even know they had these anymore." Neal announces dejectedly as he holds up a wanted poster for him. "I have to go to Canada."

Emma, still foolishly expecting that her happiness with Neal can happen, comes up with a plan so that she will steal the watches that are causing this problem in the first place. A couple of hours later, the couple meets back up in their yellow bug. Emma shows Neal the case with the watches inside.

"You got them!" Neal is ecstatic.

He pulls one of the watches out of the case and places it on Emma's wrist.

"Is that the one we're going to keep?" Emma asks.

"Of course," Her boyfriend replies "Look at how good it looks on you."

They decide that Neal is going to go fork **[1]** the watches, and in a few hours they'll meet up in a particular location. It's the longest, by far, few hours in Emma's life. When the chosen time comes, 7:30 PM, Emma is ready and waiting for Neal at their meeting place. It's a couple of minutes before someone arrives, and it's not Neal, it's the police.

The police arrest Emma for possession of stolen property. The last bit of the day goes by for Emma in a heartbroken blur. She doesn't even register being told her rights, or being lead into the police car, or being shoved into a jail cell. She doesn't really notice anything until she lies down on the cot in the cell and eventually manages to fall asleep.

* * *

Blue Fox is still on heartbroken induced autopilot when she wakes up in the inn. She doesn't notice that she gave way too much money for her room and breakfast an hour later as she leaves the inn. In fact Blue is still on autopilot as she leaves the inn and wonders into the forest. She continues on autopilot for the next three or so hours right up until she, literally, trips over an injured and trapped Unicorn.

* * *

 **[1] Is "fork" the proper term, or at least the one used in the show, in the episode "Tallahassee"?  
**

 **Please tell me, or any review at all would be nice (hint hint, wink wink, shove shove).**


	7. Trapping and Hunting

Unicorns are extremely rare creatures to even see from a distance, let alone up close. Unicorns are also the most magical creatures to exist. Hair (specially from the tail) and a horn from a Unicorn make very, very potent potion ingredients. These can be taken from a living or dead Unicorn and be just as potent either way. Now the blood of a Unicorn is the most powerful substance, in existence in any realm even in a highly dilute state (and these rules about Unicorn blood is true about the blood of unicorns from any realm), but the Unicorn blood must be willing given, or else it will be worse than useless. Anyone who takes Unicorn blood without express permission will suffer from a fate worse than death.

You might be able to imagine Blue Fox's shock at tripping over an injured and trapped Unicorn. The trap was a simple thing, very similar in appearance and function to that of a bear trap. It's odd really, Blue can kill a fellow human being without giving it a second thought, but seeing the trapped Unicorn, she is over come with sympathy and a desire to help.

Blue first picks herself up and apologizes the Unicorn for tripping over it, Unicorns are highly intelligent creatures, and some can even talk in human tongues (or so it is said). Blue crouches down, eventually sitting herself in cross-legged fashion to get a better look at the trap. The Unicorn's front right leg is caught in the trap a couple of inches below the hoof. There is Unicorn blood (Unicorn blood would appear to be a bright and shiny goldish, silverish color) all over the place and the lower leg is probably broken, Blue observes.

"I'm going to try to get your leg out of the trap and heal it a little," Blue Fox tells the Unicorn.

The Unicorn lets out a little whinny that Blue interrupts to mean "Stop talking and get on with it."

Blue suppresses a little chuckle and does and the Unicorn seems to have requested,

"Ah!" Blue yelps in pain as her right hand slips and gets cut horizontally all the way across her palm.

"Cut my palm a little" Blue answers the Unicorn's unspoken question.

Blue grits her teeth and ignores the pain and the fact that she 'might' be getting Unicorn blood in her wound. Once she has the trap steady and open, she eases the Unicorn's leg out. Blue places her hands around the obvious wound in the leg (hoping that there aren't any hidden ones).

"I'm going to attempt a basic healing spell on your leg." Blue announces, "I hope it works, 'cause I don't know any other ones."

The Unicorn snorts in acknowledgment.

To Blue's surprise, the healing spell actually works. She slowly stands up and faces the Unicorn (all face to face like). She goes to place her right hand on the side of the Unicorn's head, having forgotten that it was still bleeding. The Unicorn, on the other hand, hadn't forgotten, it intercepts her hand with its horn. As the horn touches her cut, it instantly heals, not even a scar is left behind.

'You shall forever have my thanks,' Blue hears the Unicorn say, in her head. 'And as a small token of gratitude, I wish you to keep my blood with in you, and may you never need it.'

And before Blue can get over her shock to reply, the Unicorn has run off and disappeared. Once she has managed to regain control of her body and mind, she raises her right hand so that she can look at it. Her hand is now clean of all blood, hers and the Unicorn's. Blue has a hunch that is true of all of the blood that had been around. As Blue continues to stare at her hand, she notices that where the cut had been there is a faint line the same beautiful shade as the Unicorn blood had been. The line is so faint, that if you didn't know to look for it, you never see it. So faint that Blue isn't convinced that she's not imagining it.

Blue Fox spends the next few minutes (like four of 'em) staring at her hand and processing the fact that she had met, healed, communicated with, and now has some blood of a fricking Unicorn! Then, it occurs to Blue that she has no idea as to where she is.

"How did I get out here?" Blue wonders out loud.

Then she remembers, she had run out here in a vain attempt to get away from the fact that had betrayed her in the other world. 'I really could use Dragon to hold me.' Blue silently muses, 'But if I found her, and told her, she would probably say "I told you so", I don't want that right now, or at all.' She seriously underestimates what kind of person Dragon is in this moment. Blue collapses on the ground and tugs her knees up to her chest and cries.

* * *

When Dragon reaches her armory, she methodically removes all but one of the many weapons she is carrying. On any given day, Dragon has at least thirty different weapons upon her person, and even in the safety of her own home, Dragon never completely un-arms herself. She always carries at least one weapon at all times, even to sleep and in the shower. Dragon had learned, the hard way, when she was seven, that one should always be armed, because you are never completely safe. Despite being to kill a man fifteen different ways, by hand, she still never completely disarms herself.

As she places the most of her weapons in their places within her armory, her armory includes over a hundred different weapons (she likes to mix up which weapons she uses on a day to day bases), Dragons fingers brush over the two weapons she will never arm herself with. These two weapons are a single pair of knives. At the base of the blades, barely legible (do to the small size) by the hilt, is an inscription on each knife. One blade is inscribed with the name "Peter Minz", and the other inscribed with the name "Jacob Minz". Also on the base of Peter's blade (much larger) was the name "Solid Minz" and on Jacob's blade (with the same size font in the same location) was the name "Rock Minz".

Dragon's eyes close and tears begin to well up behind her lids as the memory of the twin eleven year olds flashes in her mind. Their chosen names had been 'Rock' and 'Solid'. They had planned on being a rock solid team against the world. Jacob, the slightly older one (by twelve seconds) was 'Rock'. The day they had died, their personalized blades had been left behind. The boys had been unarmed the day they were killed in their home. Dragon shook her head in a physical attempt to shake away the memories, there was too much guilt and remorse and longing attached to those memories. Dragon tried to replace the memories with those of early that morning and the night before when the town had declared her a hero.

"I'm a hero now, and I was seven then, this is just a bad case of survivor's guilt." Dragon tried to convince herself, for the umpteenth time, in vain over these memories.

'But they died for me.' the (not so) little voice inside her head that felt the guilt the most strongly, 'they are real heroes.'

Dragon fetches one of only a handful of her swords. Of the dozens of knives and daggers and at least a dozen of different types of bows and several somewhat less conventional weapons such as staffs and spears and slings and a few custom jobs, Dragon had all of five swords. One is a typical long sword that one would associate with feudal Europe (called a "Long Blade" in Imontar), one is near identical to a sword from Imperial China (the "Hachi" {hach-e} in Imontar), another is akin to a Katana from feudal Japan ("Komar"), the fourth is similar to the kind from Ancient Egypt with the weird hook thing ("Boln"), and the fifth is technically two swords as it a duel sword, if you've ever seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, think of Zuko's swords, ("Duel Blades" a common nickname for with weapon is "Duel Deaths").

Dragon grabs the Komar in hopes that some practice will help her forget (if only temporarily) about Jacob and Peter. After someone dies in Imontar, it is considered more respectful to refer to them by their True Names if you know that name. She realizes, just shy of an hour into practice, that it's not working. Dragon sighs, places her sword back into its place in her armory and removes one of her weaker bows and a quiver full of arrows and decides that she might as well try to do a little hunting for a bit of lunch. On her way out, Dragon grabs about ten other weapons to arm herself with before heading out for her hunting.


	8. Love Between Friends

**So the whole thing with the Unicorn last chapter might not seem, at all important, and until the sequel, it's not very.**

* * *

Two hours and a rabbit latter, Dragon Jacket is stalking a deer with the hope of getting enough meat to last herself a week. There's a rustle in the bushes from behind her. Dragon slowly spins around to see not a deer, but a Unicorn bounding by. At least Dragon thinks it was a Unicorn, she only glimpsed it for under a second. Oddly enough, despite being an avid collector of magical ingredients (especially rare ones like Unicorn horn or hair) for potion making, Dragon felt compelled to go back the way the Unicorn had come from instead of trying to follow it.

After about three minutes of backtracking the Unicorn, an unexpected sound reaches Dragon's ears. It would seem to be the sound of someone crying. A couple of minutes later, and closer to the source of the crying, Dragon would swear that it sounds like Blue Fox is the one sobbing. Extremely puzzled by this, Dragon Jacket rushes forward into a small clearing to see none other than Blue crumpled on the ground in a little ball and sobbing. Dragon drops the bow along with her rabit and rushes over to her friend's side, sits down and pulls Blue close into a comforting embrace.

"What's wrong?" Dragon softly whispers into Blue's ear.

"You'll just make fun of me!" Blue wails.

"Now why would I do a stupid thing like that?" Dragon inquires.

"Because you told me so!" Blue screams.

Dragon pulls her best friend into her lap and holds her closer.

"I would have to be a truly terrible friend and person to try and hurt or mock you about whatever is making you cry like this, do you really think that badly of me?"

"N.." Blue sniffles, "..No."

"So tell me, and I promise to stay here for you." Dragon pleads with her crush, crush seems like such weak word to describe how much she loves Blue Fox, but crush does imply that Blue is unaware of Dragon's feelings... **[1]**

"Neal left me!" Blue screeches, "In a most terrible way!"

" _Di' 'e ooze A tess mekage?_ "

 **[2]** Blue slightly laughs at Dragon's attempt to speak English. For the last five years she has been trying to teach Dragon how to speak English, she seems to understand far more than she can actually speak. Dragon agreed to the language lessons because she figured that nobody else would have a clue as to what the heck they would be saying (or, eventually..ish writing). English could be like a secret code... or rather that is the excuse that Dragon gave Blue as opposed to the truth; Dragon would do just about anything to make Blue happy.

" _He did not use a text message._ " Blue replies, "It was far worse. He utterly betrayed me."

As Blue attempts to tell Dragon the story as to how exactly Neal left her, she breaks into tears. Dragon lets out a little sigh as her heart clenches for her friend. Dragon also comes to the decision that she can't leave Blue out here like this; so in the midst of her tear soaked story, Dragon lifts her up and begins the trek back to Dragon's home.

Blue barely registers the fact that she has been picked up and is being moved. Several minutes later (not telling you how many, can't risk the location of Dragon's home being discovered ;) ), Blue vaguely is aware of being placed down on what feels like a bed or a couch like thing. A still crying Blue Fox is virtually unaware of her shoes and socks being pulled off, or of Dragon tenderly removing her armor-like pale blue jacket, or of her ponytail being removed nor is she aware that she is mostly unarmed before being softly tucked in. She is on, or rather in a bed after all.

The first thing that Blue is aware of since her secondary breakdown in the forest in Dragon Jacket's arms is a pair of strong arms wrapping around her body and a firm, yet feminine body comfortingly pushing, into her backside. As Blue breathes in an ever so familiar sent that is not only coming off of the person holding her, but her entire surroundings, she realizes that this is the safest she has ever felt as Blue Fox or Emma Swan.

"Neal was an idiot for not realizing how lucky he was that someone as wonderful as you even gave him the time of day." Dragon whispers into Blue's left ear. "You are amazing, and he is an idiot. A complete and total idiot."

"He left me!" Blue whimpers with tears still in her eyes.

"I thank my lucky stars everyday that I get to have you in my life." Dragon continues in the softest most loving voice that Blue has ever heard directed at herself, "I don't know what I would do with myself if you weren't in my life, My Little Blue Fox."

Dragon's term of endearment, one Blue is only just no realizing that Dragon has always used in exactly the same tone with exactly the same intent, Blue realizes that those four little words "My Little Blue Fox" (seriously little words, for crying out loud the word "Little" is the longest word in that statement) carry more love and affection than she has ever received elsewhere. Blue feels, from deep within herself, a strong longing to feel that loved in her real life as Emma Swan, to hear someone say the name "Emma Swan" to her with even half as much love and affection that Dragon says the name "Blue Fox". This revelation causes Blue to cry out.

"Call me Emma, Emma Swan."

"Okay," Dragon hesitates for a moment, "Emma."

Dragon puts just as much emotion into the name "Emma" as she does into the name "Blue". Blue doesn't have the words to describe how happy hearing that made her.

Blue realizes that she has told Dragon to call her by her True Name... and also that she had said the name "Emma Swan" in Dragon's native dialect (Like someone's birth language). Blue also realizes that she trusts Dragon not to abuse the power given to her with the knowledge of her True Name; normally only something trusted with your only life bond (Life Bonds are the Imontar version of spouses), or in other words, your true love.

* * *

 **[1] I told you that I/the narrator would be like an 'extra character'  
**

 **[2] When ever someone speaks (or attempts to speak) English in Imontar or some dialect of the Common Tongue in our world I will use italics and give you the English translation, to anyone in the story who doesn't speak the language, they will essentially hear gibberish**


	9. Weeks and Days

**Reviews would be very welcome... Okay I'll admit it, I'd kill for a Review... Just no flames, please.**

* * *

As Blue drifts off to sleep feeling safe and secure in her friend' arms, Emma Swan wakes up on a hard and cold cot. Emma looks around at her surroundings. As she takes in the grey cinder-block walls and the bars in place of a door, Emma gets a sinking feeling in her gut as she registers and remembers that she is in a jail cell. As the unpleasant memories as to how she ended up in the cell replay from the day before, Emma tries her hardest to prevent the tears that are welling up in her eyes. Emma looks past the jail cell bars that are the door to realize that she is not in a proper jail, but inside of a police station.

The memories and the heartbreak threaten to overtake her. A now familiar blurring of the senses threatens to overwhelm Emma. After a few minutes, she lets it. This general oblivious state will last Emma through the next couple of weeks until about a week into her eleven month sentence behind bars. Emma barely registers her trial long enough to plead guilty to her crime of possessing stolen goods. Despite having only turned seventeen about two months ago, Emma's trial is an adult one (no juvenile detention *aka juvie* or lenient sentences for her). During these couple of weeks the only solid thought that Emma can hold on to is, that she can't wait for the day to be over so that she can fall asleep and wake up in Dragon's arms.

* * *

While I shall be skipping the next two weeks from Emma's life, I'm about to tell you what happened to Blue Fox, at least for her next day (night?) after Emma was abandoned by Neal. After the first (of several) long and numb days, Blue wakes up to find herself still within Dragon Jacket's arms. Blue starts to move with the intention of facing Dragon, but this requires breaking out of her friends embrace to do it. As she starts to move, a still asleep, Dragon Jacket tightens her embrace.

"Not letting you go." Dragon murmurs.

Blue finds herself smiling at this, yet still determined to turn around and look at her friend. As Blue attempts to move again, Dragon briefly tightens her embrace again before loosening it as she wakes up. Dragon removes her arms from their position around her best friend.

"Morning" Dragon says sleepily.

"Good morning" Blue responds with a smile.

Dragon starts to get out of the bed.

"Where are you going?" Blue asks, unable to keep her panic out of her voice.

Dragon smiles warmly before responding, "I'm going to get washed up and dressed before showing you the bathroom so that you can do the same as I prepare some breakfast."

"Breakfast can take awhile to make, can't it?" Blue is disgusted by her inability to hide her desperation not to be alone.

"Neither of us has had anything to eat since breakfast, yesterday." Dragon responds, "I thing breakfast should be quite the necessity, 'sides I'm starving."

"But..." Blue refuses to admit that she doesn't want to be left alone.

"Would you rather I waited until we were both dressed for the day and then we can make breakfast together?" Dragon picks up on what her friend is ashamed to say out loud.

The look in Blue's eyes and her embarrassed smile is all answer Dragon needs.

"Come on," Dragon says softly, "We can get cleaned up together, the bathroom is this way."

Dragon leads Blue towards her bathroom. Blue decides against asking Dragon if she would shower with her (completely platonically... of course). Dragon lets Blue take the first shower. As Blue steps out of the shower and Dragon steps in (this is far from the first time that the girls have seen each other naked) Blue realizes that Dragon still has a knife strapped to her side.

"You're taking a knife into the shower?" Blue wonders.

"It's an old habit." Dragon tersely answers as she closes the shower door.

After the girls have finished themselves up, Dragon, with Blue in tow, heads back into the bedroom. Blue watches as Dragon promptly opens up the dresser and pulls some clothing out of it for herself before more carefully choosing some another outfit that she throws in Blue's direction.

"These should fit you." Dragon indicates the clothing that she had tossed in Blue's direction.

After getting dressed, Dragon heads towards the kitchen. As Blue obverses the ease and familiarly that Dragon uses as she moves about, a thought occurs to her.

"Is this your house?" Blue asks.

"Well technically," Dragon states, sounding slightly puzzled, "It's not a house but a dwelling that is carved into a mountain side, but yes this is my place. ...What else did you think it would be?"

"It's not that this is your place, but..." Blue struggles to explain her surprise, "It's that you have a place at all."

"To be fair," Dragon admits, "When we first met, I didn't have a place, but by the time I was thirteen, I grew tired of you nagging me about not having somewhere to go home to, so I created this place."

"If it was my nagging that prompted you to get this place, why didn't you tell me about it. ...YOU CREATED THIS PLACE!?"

Dragon just chuckles in reply. A few minutes later, a mouthwatering aroma fills the kitchen. A couple of minutes after that, Dragon carries two plates of food over to a table in the kitchen and calls Blue over to eat. Blue tastes the food.

"Oh gods!" Blue exclaims, "This is delicious! Is there anything you can't do?"

"I can't draw." Dragon answers the rhetorical question with a shrug of the shoulders, "I'm a terrible artist."

It's Blue's turn to only laugh in response.

* * *

'She has a beautiful laugh.' Dragon muses inside her head. 'I would kill to hear her laugh more... especially if I am the one to make her laugh... with me, not at me... probably.' Their meal is concluded in silence. 'I should probably stop staring at her like a love stricken puppy...' Luckily for Dragon's ego (or lack thereof) Blue doesn't notice, or at the very least doesn't comment about Dragon staring at her.

"Is there anything in particular you want to do today?" Dragon asks as they finish their breakfast.

"Maybe we could do a little hunting?" Blue suggests.

"I needed to do a bit of hunting anyways." Dragon honestly says. "Come on, I'll show you the armory, feel free to pick just about any weapons you want for the hunt."

"You have an armory?" Blue wonders, "Why am I surprised?"

Dragon chuckles again and wordlessly leads the way to her armory.


	10. First Meeting

Dragon Jacket is highly amused by Blue Fox's reaction to her armory. It is pretty impressive and extensive, if Dragon does say so herself. In Dragon's eyes it Blue is acting kind of like a kid in a candy store. A spike of panic fills Dragon as she sees Blue touching Minz brother's knives.

"Don't use those two knives!" Dragon calls out.

"Why not?" Blue inquires as she feels the perfect balance that the blades have. "Rock and solid sound pretty good to me."

"They're not to be used." Dragon insists with a note of desperation in her voice.

Dragon does not want Blue using those blades, the only physical reminders of Jacob and Peter. She also doesn't wish to have to explain why, nor does she wish to lie to Blue. Dragon would rather not have to think about the brothers at all, nor does she want to risk anything happening to her only reminders.

* * *

Blue catches the note of desperation in Dragon's voice. She turns around and sees a hint of fear in her friend's eyes. Blue doesn't know why this is so important to Dragon, but it is clear to her that it is very important to Dragon that these two knives with the words "Rock" and "Solid" inscribed on the base of the hilts are not to be used.

"Okay, I won't use them." Blue does not miss the brief look of relief on Dragon's face as she replaces the knives.

Blue looks around the armory some more before deciding on taking a small composite bow and the weapons that she had on her person when Dragon had taken Blue to her home. Blue then watched as Dragon chose a similar bow and at least twenty other various weapons from around the room. The other weapons ranged from knives of various sizes and types to a pair of strikers (they make punches a lot harder) to what appeared to be a metal rod about a yard long to a sling.

"What's with all the weapons?" Blue is curious.

"I almost always arm myself this heavily before leaving the 'house'." Dragon replies.

"Anything special about the metal rod?" Blue asks.

Dragon smiles and pulls the rod out from under her jacket where she had placed it on her person.

"This is my own invention." Dragon says as she twists the ends of the rod in opposite directions.

As she twists the rod, a blade just shy of a yard long springs out of both ends, the length of the weapon is now doubled.

"I can use it as a rod, a staff with blades at each end or..." Dragon pauses as she twists the ends some more and the entire thing splits in half. Dragon is now holding two 1 ½' handles with 3' blades coming out of them. She has one in each hand. "...I could have to long bladed weapons."

Dragon looks rather proud of her invention as she places the halves back together, twists the ends in the opposite directions from before and the halves rejoin before the blades spring back inside the rod. Blue is quite impressed by her best friend's ingenuity. In fact Blue is rather speechless. Dragon picks up on this.

"Shall we go hunting now?" Dragon asks in a slightly cheeky tone.

Blue lets out a little laugh and nods before following her friend out of the armory. As they exit the dwelling, Blue cannot hide her shock that they seemed to have walked right through a solid rock cliff as she looks behind herself at where she would have sworn the entrance is.

As the girls set out on their hunting expedition, Blue Fox muses on how much Dragon has been taking care of her. 'She's always been taking care of me.' Blue thinks to herself, 'Ever since we met, she's been saving me.' Blue starts to think about the day they met. **[1]**

 _It was a sunny and brisk early fall day. A young Fox was impatient to do her first job as hero. She had just turned ten. This Fox had been raised in a hero school, because of this she had chosen herself a name sooner than later. At the age of five she had chosen the name "Fox" to replace the number that they had called her at the hero school. Because no one at hero schools have real family (blood relatives), they cannot have true names (in Fox's case her true name is Emma Swan, but she wasn't about to tell anybody that), and until they create chosen names for themselves they are assigned numbers to go with the hero school's name. Fox's number had been 28 (no prizes for figuring out why the number 28 has been associated with her). Fox had chosen her name at the age of five when one day she woke up with a fox pendent around her neck and declared that she was as clever as a fox._

 _Anyways, a first hero job is an unofficial rite of passage for hero school tenets when they turn ten. Fox's first hero job (mission if you will, is your name "Will"? JK) was to take down a sorcerer who was terrorizing a nearby village. Fox didn't know any spells of her own, but she had heard that a well thrown knife or arrows can travel faster than spells, so she felt confident. Perhaps foolishly so._

 _Whether it was stupidity or bravery or a combination of both, Fox felt herself more than ready to take on this sorcerer. My money is on the stupidity, or at the very least naivety that encouraged the young would be hero to march right into the sorcerer's fortress (magically created, of course, or maybe through slave power...) and announce her presence._

 _"_ _I am the hero Fox!" the ten year old girl had announced as she marched in, "And I am here to free this village from your impression."_

 _"_ _I believe the word you're looking for is 'oppression'." A snide voice mocked her from all around as the door slammed behind her._

 _A trickle of fear made its way into Fox's heart. She tried to hide it behind, now, false bravo._

 _"_ _I will still stop you!" Fox's voice shook despite her best efforts to hide her fear._

 _"_ _How do you intend to do that?" the voice asked from all sides._

 _"_ _I am a clever Fox, I will figure it out." The young blond girl shrieked._

 _"_ _You fancy yourself a fox? Do you?" the voice cackled._

 _Fox heard what sounded like a spell and suddenly, they entire world was different._

 _"_ _Well now you're a blue one!" the voice shrieked. "Why? Because I hate blue and it will make it easier for me to kill you painfully."_

 _A mirror appeared before Fox and she saw that she was indeed, a little blue fox. Suddenly the mirror disappeared and was replaced by a man in bright orange robes. 'This must be the sorcerer.' Fox thought._

 _"_ _You have a ten second head start." The sorcerer waved his hand and the doors reopened into wilderness. "I do love a good hunt." He cackled again._

 _Fox wasted about five of her seconds before she let her new body take over and she ran out the door. For all of ten minutes, Fox thought she had a chance, but then she heard the now familiar cackling not far behind._

 _"_ _I'm going to catch you, Foxy!" She was really beginning to hate that voice._

 _Fox desperately tried to run faster. In her desperation, she paid no heed to where she was going. She was so blind to her surroundings that Fox ran right into a young girl. The girl was no more than eleven, had auburn hair a red jacket and reeked of dragons. The girl was also sporting two scars, one on her cheek and the other across her neck. Fox also vaguely noticed that she had knocked something out of the girl's hand._

 _"_ _A little blue fox?" the girl had said with a chuckle, "Are you for me? Are you_ my _little blue fox?"_

 _Fox tried to yell at the girl to put her down because she was trying to run from a crazy sorcerer, but all that came out was barking. Surprisingly, the girl seemed to understand, regardless._

 _"_ _Are you in some kind of trouble?" Her tone was suddenly far more serious than before._

 _Fox furiously nodded her head._

 _The dragon girl never got a chance to respond because that was when orange clad sorcerer busted into the clearing._

 _"_ _Give me my fox!" the sorcerer demanded._

 _"_ _What are you going to do with it?" the girl asked._

 _"_ _I'm going to kill her! Painfully" the sorcerer declared._

 _"_ _Oh" is all the girl said in response._

 _She placed Fox down on the ground. Fox whimpered with fear and tried to hide behind this girl. This was easier said than done because the girl had move and was bent over. Fox realized that she was looking for something, whatever it was she had been holding when Fox had run into her._

 _The sorcerer lunged forward and grabbed Fox around the middle. 'This is it, he's going to kill me now!' Fox thought with alarm. 'Any second now.' Fox tried to brace herself for the pain that had been about to come. It never came. Instead, Fox was dropped to the ground and she felt herself changing back to her true human body. When the world felt normal again, Fox looked and saw a knife sticking out of the sorcerer's chest. Fox heard a slight crackle of the underbrush and turned around to see the dragon girl staring at her._

 _"_ _Did you kill him?" Fox asked the girl._

 _"_ _Yeah, I threw my sikie blade at him." the girl responded._

 _Fox had heard about sikie blades, an individual can only make one once in their lifetime, the painstaking process that is involved in making the blade is only reserved for a truly hated enemy. The blade will damn any soul it kills to an eternity of torment. A sikie blade can only kill one person._

 _"_ _Was he you're intended target?" Fox asked, intrigued._

 _"_ _Not even close." The girl still seemed to be in shock, nor has she stopped staring at Fox._

 _"_ _Thank you." Fox said sincerely, "You're staring at me. Is it because I'm human?"_

 _"_ _It's because the transformation spell didn't completely wear off." The girl answered._

 _"_ _What?"_

 _"_ _You've got a spot of blue on your nose, and your ears are blue fox ears."_

 _"_ _Seriously?!" Fox nearly had a heart attack at the revelation. "Do you think it'll ever go back to normal?"_

 _"_ _From what I know of magic... sorry, but no." the girl responded._

 _"_ _Well," Fox was despondent, "Thank you again for saving me. ...My name is 'Fox' by the way."_

 _"_ _If you don't mind," The girl responded with a cheeky grin, "I'm going to call you 'Blue Fox'. My name is Dragon Jacket."_

 _"_ _Nice to meet you Dragon Jacket." Fox put her hand out in offer of a shake, "in light of what just happened, I might just change my name to 'Blue Fox', anyways."_

 _Dragon Jacket took the newly rechristened Blue Fox's hand and shook it, "Nice to meet you too. I'll be going now."_

"If that deer was any closer," the voice of the eighteen year old Dragon Jacket shakes the seventeen year old Blue Fox out of her thoughts, "It would literally be under your blue spotted nose."

* * *

 **[1] Here and from now on, if I'm doing a scene from the past it will be in italics, and if someone speaks a language not native to the world the scene is taking place in it will be underlined.**


	11. What do I Know About You?

Dragon Jacket found herself incapable of hiding her highly amused grin *yes, the grin was amused*, nor her chuckle at her best friend jumping as she came back to Imontar **[1]**. The moment, and the grin couldn't erase the sadness that seemed to have taken seat in her soul at the knowledge of what Blue was going through in her 'dreams'.

In all fairness, the deer was practically under Blue's nose, but between Dragon's chuckle, and Blue Fox's started movements, they scared the deer off.

"Why didn't you just shoot the deer?" Blue grumbles at her friend.

"You're the one who wanted to go hunting; I thought you might like the first kill." Dragon responded, not completely sure herself if that statement was meant in seriousness or in jest.

Blue Fox's only response is the very mature action of sticking her tongue out at Dragon Jacket.

Dragon lets out another soft chuckle, before saying, "Would you rather we split up?"

Blue responds with a hasty, "No!"

Dragon feels a pang in her heart at desperation in Blue's response. She also feels guilty for the joy that brings her.

Blue then attempts to save face by back pedaling, "Because, I would get lost out here, I don't know the area at all."

Dragon gives her crush a look that borderlines on pity, she tried very hard to keep that particular emotion out of her expression because she knows that pity is the last thing her friend wants.

"Okay" Dragon responds softly.

"Now..." Dragon mutters, with a wry grin, "Can we get some actual hunting done?"

A faint blush briefly graces Blue's face at this, "Of course!" she proclaims with comically fake bravo.

Another amused grin alights on Dragon's face at her friends answer.

* * *

A few hours later found the girls returning to Dragon's dwelling after a successful hunting trip as evidenced by the deer and two rabbit carcasses they were hauling with them.

Once inside the mountain, Blue volunteered to prep the meat of the deer for short term storage, i.e. the next few days, while Dragon set about preparing the rabbets for lunch.

Blue Fox found herself relieved at the amount of concentration that prepping the deer required. It made it harder for her mind to drift to thoughts of... nope she was determined to not even think his name if at all possible. It wasn't a perfect system, especially as all too soon her task was over, and Dragon wasn't quite done with their late lunch just yet. **[2]**

Blue was gripped by a sudden desire to cleanse herself. Cleanse herself not just of dirt and sweat and deer guts/blood, but of Emma Swan and her time with Neal in particular. She found herself bounding towards Dragon Jacket's shower. Blue stripped her clothing and various weapons off of herself, and practically throws herself into the shower.

Blue grabs the soap and desperately scrubs at her skin at her body. She is hysterical and rubbing herself raw. She is crying and murmuring things like "I just want to be clean of it," "I want it gone!" and "Why!?"

Eventually, Blue finds herself curled up in a little ball under the shower's stream, numb to everything but her own little world of pain and heartbreak. At some point, the shower turned cold, not that she noticed, nor did she notice when the shower turns off. And Blue only vaguely notices when arms wrap around her.

After awhile, Blue does come to register the fact that Dragon, mostly clothed, is hugging Blue in her lap. This realization somehow only serves to make an almost calmed Blue cry hard again. These tears seem to come from a different emotion, one Blue fails to recognize.

It takes some more time, but Blue eventually calms down, not completely, but a fair amount. This prompts Dragon to speak up.

"Hey," Dragon says in a soft voice, "Why don't we get dried up, and put some fresh clothes on."

Still sniffling, Blue nods her head.

"Okay, then." Dragon responds in the same voice as she gently coaxes Blue out of her curled up form.

Slowly the two girls stand up, once they do, Dragon leads Blue out of the shower. Once this is accomplished, Dragon releases her friend and proceeds to remove her wet clothing.

Still in her mild state of shock, Blue watches her friend strip *that sounded dirtier than intended*. Blue finds what little attention she is currently capable of generating is transfixed on the scar over her friends heart. Dragon has had that scar for as long and Blue has known her, and also like the other two, Blue has no idea how Dragon got them, not that she's ever asked.  
As she looks at the scar Blue realizes just how little she knows about her friend. Not only the origin of her scars, but she didn't even know about this place before, not her family name, if she has/had a family, if she ever went to hero school, the origin of her name, what was so important about "Rock" and "Solid", or even why she smelt so strongly of dragon's when they first met. On the other hand, Blue has, as of that morning, told Dragon, literally everything about herself. Blue's mind went, unbidden, to thoughts of how much Neal had know about her, Emma, and how little she had known about him. She shivered at the thought.

Dragon caught the shiver, potentially misinterpreted it, how could she have had the same thought process that Blue just had, and wrapped her friend in a large warm towel.

Blue shook her negative thoughts away, tried to at any rate. A few minutes later, the girls, now fully dressed, were sitting on the couch, and Dragon holding Blue.

"Are you hungry?" Dragon inquires, thinking about the lunch that had long since gone cold, and uneaten.

Instead of responding to the question, Blue's thoughts from earlier came racing back.

"I don't know anything about you!" Blue cries as she jerks herself out of Dragon's embrace.

"Where's this coming from?" Dragon asks, concerned, and completely confused.

"You know everything about me!" Blue responds, "And I know almost nothing about you!"

"What do you want to know?" Dragon wonders.

"Everything!"

"That's a pretty hard place to start."

"Where did you scars come from?" is the first specific question that comes to Blue's mind."

"The one on my face came from a dragon." Dragon Jacket admits.

"What's the story behind it!" Blue demands.

* * *

 **[1] As apposed to "Back to Earth"... get it?**

 **[2] This sentience feels overly redundant, Or is that just me, rather only me?**


	12. Once Story at a Time

**For my handful of fans out there, I would update this story more if I got reviews, from multiple people...**

 **I also don't own Once Upon a Time, or anything you recognize from there (mainly Emma at this point...)**

* * *

Dragon Jacket releases a sigh before beginning her tale.

" _I was about eight years old at the time. I was running, for no reason but to get away from the one thing you can't run from, your past._ "

"What happened that you were running from?" Blue interrupts.

"One story at a time," Dragon claims, before resuming her tale, " _I wasn't running anywhere in particular, and all I had to my name, a name I had forsaken, was clothes on my back, an old white jacket that was far too big for me in particular. As I refused to give any name to the people I encountered, they took to calling me 'Jacket Girl'. I didn't care; I never stayed in one place for very long, anyways._

" _One day I overheard what sounded like some great beast streaking in pain. The smart thing to have done would have been to run the other way. Back then, I was determined to do anything_ but _the smart thing. I made my way towards the sound; it was an awful, ear splitting sound._

" _I came across an adult dragon, it appeared to be bleeding from its neck. There were charred bodies of what looked to be three adult heroes, and the remains of what appeared to be large pieces of eggs. I would later learn that those 'heroes' were actually poachers, who stole dragon eggs and that the adult dragon had been the mother of the now shattered eggs._

" _In some mixture of stupidity, curiosity, and perhaps a death wish, I approached the dragon. It roared at me, perhaps, too tired and or hurt to burn me. Or maybe it knew I was just a child, and didn't truly wish me harm, regardless, I ended up getting close enough to touch her._

" _She must have changed her mind about hurting me, or something, because she swiped one of her claws at me. She either was truly exhausted, or didn't intend to harm me, because all I got was the cut on my cheek. Now, by this time I knew a couple of basic healing spells, and I was determined to try and heal this dragon, why, I don't know._

" _Still, I made my way over, underneath really, to this dragon. Once there, I reached up, and the tips of my fingers, barely managed to brush the underside of her neck. The dragon's blood dripped down, all over me. It turned my old jacket red, and dripped into the wound on my cheek, some of the dragon's blood mingled with my own, and as I looked up and opened my mouth to perform the healing spell, some of the blood when into my mouth, I found myself swallowing some of it. Despite partially choking on the dragon's blood and the acrid stinging that came with it, I completed the two healing spells that I knew._

" _Sometime after, probably almost immediately after, I finished the spells, the painful affects of drinking dragon's blood and having some enter my veins rendered me unconscious._

" _When I woke up, the dragon was hovering over me, as a mom might hover over her child. Also, almost all of my clothing was, gone, disintegrated, except the jacket which seemed to be permanently red now. When the dragon noticed I was waking up, it began to talk to me, or rather growl in its language. Imagine my surprise when I realized I understood it._ Ever since then I've been able to speak with any creature that flies; I try not to think about that when I eat a bird or eggs... Also, it seems the dragon blood in my veins has made me immune to getting burnt, and fires leave me and everything on my person unscathed."

"Is that also how you got your signature jacket and name?" Blue asks when Dragon Jacket finishes her story.

"Yeah, and it seems, that since being soaked in dragon's blood, the jacket is impenetrable, not that I've gone out of my way to test that." Dragon adds.


	13. Settling In

A silence descends upon the duo at the conclusion of Dragon's tale. The silence could not be described as awkward, but nor could it be called comfortable, it hung somewhere between the two stereotypical states of silence, seemingly to swinging between the two. The mood that settled between the two teenagers felt unnamable, yet Dragon Jacket and Blue Fox felt its affect rather strongly.

Neither girl knew how long they stayed on the couch, or even when they had shifted back into their earlier position with Dragon cuddling Blue. They stayed there lost in their separate thoughts for a while. Dragon mussed on the feeling that a weight of some kind had been lifted from her chest by sharing that little bit with her friend, and a sudden desire to share more. Blue thought on the various details of the story and pondered what name Dragon had forsaken, and why she had been running at such a young age. The girls were eventually roused from their thoughts when the growling of their stomachs became impossible to ignore.

"Come on," Dragon is the first to speak up and as she does so she gently shakes Blue's shoulder, "We should eat something."

"Okay" Blue murmurs her consent before slowly untangling herself from Dragon's embrace.

"Let's reheat lunch and just call it dinner at this point." Dragon says softly.

Blue nods in agreement and joins Dragon in the kitchen. After a few minutes, the girls sit down to enjoy the reheated food. At first the dinner is quiet with little to no conversation, but Blue soon grows sick of this and can't handle just her thoughts at the moment.

"How..How did your job in Avalon go?" Blue suggests conversation starter. "The one with Minatare?"

"Turns out it was in Altin, and it was a Medusa." Dragon pouts, "I hate drunken messengers!"

Blue chuckles at the look on Dragon's face before processing what her friend had said, "A MEDUSA! Holy Shit!"

Dragon lets out a little chuckle of her own, "My thoughts exactly."

"But you beat it!"

"Another score to the dragon soaked jacket!"

"Were you loaned a sword?" Blue inquires.

"I had to go sword-less." Dragon grumbles, "There wasn't a sword in the entire damn town, apparently too many hopefuls never came back so the blacksmith melted all that was left down!"

"How did you kill it?" Blue is in awe.

"Sheer dumb luck," Dragon claims, "When I discovered that I was expected to face a Medusa, I thought for sure that I was a goner."

"How full was the reward pouch?" Blue asks with a teasing grin.

"Very" Dragon smirks back.

"And how much did your virtuous and moral ways make you return?" Blue asks, remembering all the times Dragon would return most if not all of the reward money for various jobs because she felt guilty for taking so much from often poor peoples.

"None," Dragon replies, "'sides, you're the one who started that!"

Blue quietly laughs at her friend's petulant tone. "You sound like a child throwing a temper tantrum."

"No!" Dragon says whilst over exaggerating her previous petulant tone, "I don't!" Dragon abruptly turns her head to the side and briefly sucks on her thumb.

Blue laughs aloud at her friend's antics. Dragon's face splits into a grin at the sound of her laugh. Dragon had not heard her friend laugh so freely in too long, okay probably the last time was less than a week ago, but anything before she found Blue weeping in the forest feels like a lifetime ago to Dragon.

The happy mood is interrupted by Blue yawning; which is shortly followed by Dragon yawning. Dragon chuckles softly before announcing that it's time for bed. In the bedroom, both girls change into night clothes, Blue borrowing from Dragon again. Blue falls asleep firmly snuggled in Dragon's arms her head, briefly free of her struggles in our world.

Over the next four days, the girls fall into a bit of a routine. They would get up, get ready for the day, eat breakfast, do something outside (hunting, gathering, hiking, ect), have lunch, Dragon would read something from her fiction collection to Blue (Blue has a thing for poetry, Dragon does not), do a little weapons practice, or they would discuss non-important things, eat dinner, cuddle on couch and or bed, and fall asleep.

On the fifth day, Blue was tired of borrowing Dragon's clothing. Blue insisted that they find her couple of bags of belongings. Blue had lost them somewhere in between leaving the Inn and tripping over the unicorn. It took the girls over five hours to find the bags, but find them they did. These bags, the things normally on Blue's person notwithstanding, contained all of belongings in Imontar. These bags contained about five changes of clothing, two articles of sleep wear a pair of boots, some weapons, supplies (read, sleeping bag, blanket, pillow, jacket, food, water, tent, fire starter ect), some scrolls (mainly maps, monster guides and some poems) and a small handful of personal effects.

After the girls return to Dragon's mountain hideaway and their delayed midday meal, Dragon helps Blue find places for her things in her home. Dragon feels a sense of happiness at this experience. To her it signifies that Blue here to stay, because of this, for the first time, this dwelling feels like home to Dragon.

After this day the two girls settle back into the routine that they had been forming beforehand. Somehow though, Blue almost felt happier and more content, it was becoming easier for her to all but forget her harsh reality as Emma Swan in her sleeping moments **[1]**.

That is she was nearly able to forget her misery as Emma Swan, until one morning, two weeks into her prison sentence she woke up feeling rather ill.

* * *

Emma Swan wakes up with a sigh as she took in her prison surroundings; it is getting harder and harder for her to not expect Dragon to be spooning her as she awoke. All thoughts of Dragon and missing her are suddenly wiped from Emma's mind as feelings of extreme nausea overwhelm her. Emma doesn't even make it all the way out of the bed before she finds herself puking up whatever had remained in her stomach overnight.

The sight, sound and smell of Emma throwing up wakens her cellmate, whom for the life of her Emma couldn't have given the slightest clue as to what her name is **[2]**. Emma wonders if she is sick, when her cellmate offers a list of possibilities.

"Gross!" her cellmate exclaims before listing the aforementioned possibilities, "Are you sick? Is something going around? Was it last night's dinner? Oh my God!" at this point her cellmate is all but screeching in what sounds like horror, "Are you pregnant?!"

Emma had been too busy puking her guts out to listen to most of the ramble, but the last bit catches her ear. 'It's possible,' Emma musses, 'Neal and I did it, unprotected, just before he turned me in. Also, my period was supposed to come last week, I chalked it up to stress from the abandonment and imprisonment but...'

"I might be pregnant!" Emma gasps the last part of her thoughts aloud in a near whisper.

* * *

 **[1] You know, as opposed to her waking moments... did the bad joke not need explaining?  
**

 **[2] I think this sentence was badly worded, so when decoded it means that Emma has no idea what her cellmate's name is.**

 **And I never thought I would do this, but someone, anyone, please leave a review! please!**


	14. Ready or Not, Not

Shortly after coming to the conclusion that she might be pregnant, Emma, feeling more than a little terrified, requests a pregnancy test. The warden consents to this request, and later that day, with a mounting sense of panic, Emma stares as she waits for the results to show. Emma barely notices as the warden comes up behind her with a package. As Emma attempts to process the positive result of the pregnancy test, she barely hears the warden's comments.

"It looks like you'll have a car when you get out of here," the warden said as she opens Emma's package, "and a baby." Emma spends the rest of the day in a mix of shock, horror, dread and panic, but at the end of the day, in her new private cell, courtesy of the baby, as she crawls on to her cot, all Emma feels is numb, by now an all too familiar sensation.

* * *

Blue Fox wakes up, in Dragon Jacket's arms (this has since become normal for the two girls to wake up this way), with a strangled cry. This automatically wakens Dragon.

"What's wrong?" Dragon softly inquires as she hugs her friend a little tighter.

"Nothing," Blue lies despite the tears that are beginning to cloud her vision, "Nothing new, anyways."

Blue refuses to acknowledge the fact that she's pregnant in the other world, hoping desperately, that perhaps the test was faulty, or at the very least that wouldn't translate in any way to her life in Imontar, and or she would be able to ignore it all together in Imontar.

"You know what?" Blue exclaims with false cheer, as she breaks out of Dragon's snuggle and gets out of the bed with faked energy, "I want to do a mission today! I'm tired of hiding and moping!" 'And I can't think of anything better to distract me from the shit show that is my life as Emma Swan,' Blue adds in her head.

"Are you sure?" Dragon asks, not truly believing Blue's show of exuberance. "Do you honestly think that you're ready to go back to the real world?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Blue responds, indignantly, "I wouldn't have said so if I wasn't! Are you questioning my ability?"

"No!" Dragon reassures, "No, I just know that you've been rather down, and justifiably so, lately, and I wanted to be sure you were ready to move past your heartbreak. But if you're sure that you're ready, then let's get ready for the day, eat breakfast and go!"

At the earnestly of her friends concern, Blue feels a little guilty about lying to Dragon, but her refusal to feel her numbing panic at thoughts of the baby, makes Blue reaffirm her decision to go out and attempt to help people, and hopefully fight a monster or two, regardless of how, _un_ ready she truly feels.

Within an hour the two best-friend heroes are at Dragon's 'door', and ready to go out into the world and go looking for other people's trouble. And for those of you who want more details, it was mostly sunny day, the air temperature was brisk, but was expected to go up and there was slight breeze that caused the leaves to rustle.

"So," Blue asks as they exit the cave house place, "where's the nearest bit of civilization?"

Dragon lets out a chortle at the question before responding with "Just follow me."

Fifteen minutes, several direction changes and multiple inquires of "Are we there yet?" and "Are we lost?" from Blue later, Dragon leads the two of them to the edges of a middle sized town. Blue was about to head into and towards the center of the town, where they would be most likely to find some trouble to solve, when Dragon places a hand on Blue's shoulder to stop her.

"What's wrong?" Blue wonders, and is worried if Dragon has detected some unknown danger.

"I just," Dragon briefly stutters over her words, "I just wanted to be sure that you were ready for this."

Blue huffs, in only partially fake frustration and curtly responds, "Yes, I'm sure!"

Dragon gives her friend a pensive look, wets her lips, sighs, pulls her face into a neutral expression and nods slightly. And, with that, the two girls walk side-by-side into the town center.

Once within the town center, Blue and Dragon have a choice, do they try for town hall, or the one of the two inns for finding potential work? In town hall they might get an official commission for some local issue that is beyond the town's capability to handle, such a problem, if such a situation currently existed, would probably be easy for the two professional heroes, but would come with a guaranteed pay, and they would have the luxury of being able to return to Dragon's place that night. However, the inns might have travelers, and or messengers, who knew of harder, potently higher pay, but typically farther off missions.

On one hand, Blue liked the idea of the guaranty that they could return to Dragon's home, a place that she herself had started to view has her own home. On the other hand, Blue wanted a job more complex (read: distracting) than the one they would probably find at town hall, the money was a nearly irrelevant factor to Blue today. After a few minutes of contemplation, and standing in the middle of the street, Blue decided that she would go with whatever Dragon decided, only to glance at her friend and realize that Dragon wanted her to make the decision.

Blue thought for a moment more, before declaring, "Let's start at town hall, and if they don't have anything, try the inns."

"After you," Dragon agrees as she nods in agreement. Admittedly, she had suspected that this would be Blue's decision. Dragon also secretly hoped, for her friend's sake, that there would be something simple waiting for them at town hall.

Blue hesitates, her continual state of unease, heartbreak and panic, had in that moment became impossible for her to ignore. She briefly wondered if it was not too late for them to go back, before deciding that they, she had come too far to do so. However, Blue found herself lacking in the necessary courage to step forwards. Blue was about to lose her nerve again, when she felt Dragon's hand slip into hers, providing the grounding and sense of security that Blue realized she sorely needed. Hand-in-hand, the heroes walked into town hall to offer their services to the mayor.


	15. Job Hunting

**Does anybody give a damn about this story besides me? Because the complete and total lack of reviews is quite discouraging if no one wants me to continue, I'm going to abandon this story.**

* * *

Upon arriving at the town hall, the Dragon Jacket, and Blue Fox note the town's name, "Nort" **[1]**. As they enter the building, the duo notice a greeter, and wordlessly decide that talking with him would the best place to start. Dragon senses her friend's reemerging anxiety and squeezes her hand. As a result, Dragon notices Blue taking a deeper breath, and standing up a little straighter as she recollects herself. To anyone else, this would have been near impossible to notice.

They approach the greeter. He is a young man who looks to be in his twenties with dark well groomed hair. His complexion is tan, he has brown eyes. He looks to be about 6'4", and in decent shape, although either one of the two girls could probably beat him in fight in under a minute. He is dressed in what could be described as business causal, and on his desk is a name plate that reads "Jakope Narmer". As the girls approach him, he looks up with an expression that can only be described as combination of disinterest and mild curiosity, it's an odd mix.

Dragon takes it upon herself to introduce the two of them.

"Hello, Mr. Narmer," Dragon says in her most formal, non-mocking sounding voice, "I am Dragon Jacket, and this is my friend, Blue Fox. You may have heard of us... We're heroes for hire and we were wondering if there was anything potential local commissions that we could fulfill here."

Mr. Narmer's expression morphed into a combination of disbelief and excitement when Dragon mention's their names. When Blue pulls back some of her hair behind one of her ears, his expression changes to expressing purely excitement.

"It's-it's an-an hon-honor to meet you ladies!" Jakope Narmer spouts the moment Dragon finishes her introduction.

At his response, Dragon internally rolls her eyes, but can't stop a slight smile from gracing her face at obvious excitement the man feels at meeting them.

"It's an honor to meet you too," Blue grins at the man, "I'm sure, but could you check to see if Nort has any standing commissions that we could do."

'Always the people person', Dragon grins to herself.

"Ri-right!" Mr. Narmer stutters, "Commissions that's why you two are here. I'll-I'll be right back!" He runs into the door behind him, collapses, stands back up, grins sheepishly at the girls, opens the door, and scurries through it, leaving the door open behind him. Through the, now open, doorway, Dragon can see shelves and shelves of boxes over flowing with papers.

Dragon and Blue share a chuckle at the man's antics.

"Do you think he'll ask us for our _autographs_ when he comes back?" Blue wonders.

"What's an _autograph_?" Dragon asks, sounding out the unknown English word.

Blue mentally curses, she had forgotten that there was no such thing as "autographs" in Imontar, nor was there any similar practices, and therefore no equivalent words that could, passably, be translated for the word "autograph".

"Never mind," Blue shakes her head, "I'll explain later."

Dragon simply nods in response, temporarily satisfied with this answer.

After a few more minutes of waiting, Jakope Narmer returns from the room behind the desk holding a thick scroll.

"This is the list of non-mundane complaints." Mr. Narmer explained. 'Non-mundane complaints', i.e . any report made by a townsfolk that could potentially require a hero's services. The larger towns and cities often had their own 'personal heroes' to deal with less major events. And even the smallest of villages often had someone who could deal with the truly minors ones. Anything left unsolved in the scroll would be anything from semi-minor to very dangerous, more likely towards the minor side of the scale, "I'll scroll to the most recent ones, and we can go over any that are unsolved, and seem pertinent."

After a minute or so of searching, Mr. Narmer has the scroll open at the most recent complaints. He hands it over to the girls, assuming that they would be far more qualified than he for determining which complaints were worth investigating.

After a few minutes of looking over the scroll, shared glances and the occasional whisper, Blue brought the scroll back over to Jakope Narmer's desk and pointed out the most recent entry.

"This one was made by your personal hero's apprentice," Blue explains, "He claims that while he was in the forest scavenging for potion ingredients, that he was attacked by a bush. Now that sounds like a twig blight, which is a relatively simple monster to deal with, why is there no mention of the personal hero attempting to do so?"

"I-I don'-don't know!" Mr. Narmer squeaks.

"Do you have any pertinent information?" Dragon inquires, "Especially as that seems to be the only potentially viable case?"

"I'm sorry" Mr. Narmer is the picture of guilt and sorrow, "I'm truly sorry I can't be more help to you two... Wait! I can give you directions to our personal hero's lodging, you might be able to talk to her or her apprentice in person about it."

Blue hands the scroll back to Jakope Narmer as he gives them the directions. When he finishes, Dragon thanks the man for his assistance, he looks about ready to faint from excitement when she does. After making sure that he doesn't in fact faint, the two heroes leave town hall for the local hero's place.

Upon arriving at the town's personal hero's home base, Dragon Jacket and Blue Fox note the building appears to be in a slight state of neglect, as if the occupant had given up on maintaining it. All of the shades were drawn, and there were an abundance of weeds were growing upon the entrance pathway (front walk). Normally, a personal hero would keep up with maintenance of their dwelling, including weeding, to provide a sense of welcoming to the other townsfolk. It was also rare for any hero to leave the windows covered at anytime, they liked being able to see what was happening just beyond their walls.

The lack of care, and the covered windows gave the two female heroes a feeling of unease. Despite their uneasiness, they continued to approach the dwelling, and knocked on the door. A lad, about the age of eleven opened the door, he had white skin, red hair that was cropped cut, narrow cheek bones and a light splattering of freckles.

"My master's not in." the boy said hastily before moving to re-close the door.

* * *

 **[1] Having nothing to do with the story, Nort is short for No Ort which I learned at a DEC summer camp. Ort is food waste.  
**

 **You know, if I get some reviews, I can have another chapter ready today or tomorrow...**


	16. The Interview

**To the handful of people reading this story, you can thank DarkSwanKyuubi for reviewing, prompting this update.**

* * *

Blue places her foot in the way, stopping the boy from shutting it all the way, and commented, with a shit eating grin, "Then it's a good thing that we're here to talk to you, and not her, isn't it?"

The apprentice lets the door swing back open a foot or two, a look of disbelief and fear flashed across his face. "Real-really?" the boy asks nervously, "Wh-why do two want to talk with me?"

"We're traveling heroes," Dragon enters the conversation, "and when we stopped by town hall a few minutes ago, we noticed your twig blight **[1]** complaint..."

The boy gulps, wets his lips before motioning for the girls to enter. He directs them towards a sitting area, and tells them to sit down.

"Twig blight?" the boy nervously responds after they sit, "There is no twig blight."

"What about the bush that attacked you?" Dragon inquires.

"Oh, that" the boy gulps, "I... I... uh... the bush just tangled in my clothes, and I panicked, that's all! I'm...I'm a very nervous boy..."

"We can see that." Blue smirks.

"Now," Dragon says calmly, "Why don't you stop lying, and tell us the truth about the twig blight? And what happened to your master."

The boy glanced down, shamefaced, gulps again, looks back up at Dragon Jacket before spewing. "Well, I haven't been an apprentice hero very long, only a month or so. My master took me out in the woods to teach me what various plants looked like, and their uses. He encouraged me to go off by myself, when a twig blight surprised me! I screamed, and tried to fight it myself, but I only made it worse! When my master came to help, I only made it worse! He died trying to help me! I killed him!" By the end of his tale, the boy was in tears. "I killed him! And I got away! It's all my fault!"

"Was the twig blight killed in the process?" Blue asks.

"I don't know!" the boy wails.

"Guess we're going twig blight hunting." Dragon sighs.

"You don't have to be so melodramatic!" Blue claims, as she lightly shoves her friend.

"But it's so much fun!" Dragon whines.

The boy looks at the two heroes in a combination of confusion, and worry. Dragon notices the boy's expression.

"Don't worry kid, you're coming with us." She smirks.

"What?!" he exclaims, "Why?"

"We need you to lead us to where you last saw the twig blight." Blue explains.

"But! But..."

"But, what?"

"I... I'm... I'm scared." He admits.

"And your fear got your master killed." Dragon refutes, a bit roughly, "and here's your chance to help make up for it."

The boy looks down, and shuts up, realizing that he's not getting out of going.

"Now that, that's settled" Dragon claims, "shall we be going?"

"Don't you need some kind of potion or spell before you go?" the boy asks, wanting to delay their start as much as possible.

"I already know the spell I'll need to confirm whether or not there's a twig blight in the area, or if there's more than one."

"But... but, how do you plan on killing it?"

"Probably fire."

"But, there's been a bit of a drought lately." The boy claims.

"Then we'll just have to be extra careful." Blue answers, cheerfully.

"But..."

"We know what we're doing. Now, do you have another objections or delays?"

"No" the boy admits, glumly.

And so, he reluctantly leads Dragon and Blue into the woods, where he last saw his master. Where he got his master killed. A silence falls over trio as they go. A few minutes later, they arrive at the scene. There is still part of the hero's body lying on the ground. It is mangled, bloody, and decaying. Blue nearly retches, but whether that's from the smell and sight, or her pregnancy in the other world, she's not sure.

Dragon also seems hesitant in approaching what's left of the woman, but she approaches the corpse, all the same. She kneels down beside the body and begins her inspection.

There wasn't much left. Mostly blood stains surrounding the area, but the head was mostly there, even if the eyes had been chewed out. Except for most of the left arm, and the right foot, all of the limbs were gone. And of the torso, some of the rib cage, and intestines had been left. The woman's clothing, torn and bloody as they were, were mostly there.

The sound of retching interrupted Dragon's inspection. It was the apprentice; Blue was doing her best to comfort him.

"I get that this is disturbing," Dragon tries to be as gentle as possible, "but we need to inspect the remains to get as good idea as possible about what happened."

Blue takes the hint, and joins Dragon by the remains. Together they start a fairly thorough inspection. The boy manages to stop retching, and watches as they do it, impressed.

After their inspection, they share their opinion of what happened with the kid.

"Well, based on the bite, and claw marks," Dragon begins, "It was definitely a twig blight. Also leading credence to that theory is that no other animal has come along and finished the remains. Twig blights mark their prey with special pheromones if it's too big for them to have at one time that dissuade other creatures from having it."

"Considering how long the body has been here, and its state of consumption," Blue takes over, "There is probably two twig blights working together here, but to be sure Dragon is going to cast a spell to confirm this."

The apprentice is fascinated by how they can tell so much detail from the corpse. But he is also horrified at how clinical they are treating his master, and her death.

"How, can the two of be so emotionless about my master's death?" he cries.

"We can't afford to be emotional about her." Blue sorrowfully admits, "We can't afford to be emotional about any of the dead we encounter in our travels, not until after we apprehend their killers. Being emotional can get us killed."

"How about a little quiet?" Dragon requests, tersely, "I need to be able to focus on this spell!"

"Sorry" Blue responds.

Dragon stands still. She closes her eyes, breaths deeply, once, twice. She then speaks aloud a phrase in a language that no one else there can understand. She continues to stand stock still with her eyes closed for a few moments. When she opens her eyes, she grins.

"We were right," she reports, "there are two twig blights in the area. And they're close by."

"So," the boy wonders, "how do you we catch them?"

"We're gonna set a trap." Blue answers, cheerfully.

"How?"

"Well, first we're going to need bait." Blue Fox admits, "But you're not going to like this part."

"Why?" the boy nervously inquires.

"Because the bait is going to be an alive, but injured animal." Dragon Jacket answers, looking away from the lad.

"That's cruel!" he exclaims.

"But necessary," Dragon refutes, still looking away.

"I'll get the bait," Blue decides, "Dragon, you take the lad to set up the trap."

"Come on, kid." Dragon says, as she nods her agreement to Blue.

* * *

 **[1] I got Twig Blight from the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual.  
**

 **If I don't come up with/take from common knowledge a magic animal/monster, then I'll be taking it from D &D. I will note every time they come from D&D.**


	17. Pay Day

**I seem to be far more motivated to update when I get reviews. Hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge...**

* * *

"Where are we going?" the kid asks.

"To find a suitable area to set the trap." Dragon Jacket answers as she leads the way further into the forest.

"What does that look like?"

"A slight clearing, some distance away from the site we just left, but still close enough that the twig blights will investigate."

"But how do we set the trap? What does that look like?" the boy inquires.

"It'll be easier to explain when we find our location." Dragon responds, "Then I'll be able to show you."

The boy takes this answer, and remains silent for the next few minutes. As they go, he marvels at the hero's ability to move silently through the forest. It also makes him feel like a total klutz. To him it sounds like he's stepping on every twig, and in general just blundering his way around the woods.

About 10 to 15 minutes after leaving the site of the local hero's death, Dragon comes to a stop. The kid, not immediately realizing this, walks into her. In turn he blusters out an apology. Dragon Jacket waves it aside; telling him that it is inconsequential.

"This is the place we'll use." She announces as she looks around the small clearing. The clearing is maybe five to seven feet across, and slightly less populated with undergrowth then the area surrounding it.

"So," the lad wonders, "Now what?"

"Now," Dragon answers, "we take several stones and use them to form a circle about three feet across. But, we're going to leave one stone out of the circle until after the bait has been added. Before the bait gets added we'll have to fill the circle with lots of dry brush and wood."

"Why do we leave the circle open?"

"Because, as we form the circle I'm going to be casting spells on the stones that once the circle is complete, will activate."

"What kind of spells?"

"One spell will deter non-twig blight creatures; another will ignite the brush and the wood and burn whatever enters the circle first; the final will prevent anything that enters the circle from escaping."

"So," the boy asks, "where do we begin?"

"By finding several rocks!" Dragon responds, with a loud unspoken "duh".

The pair spends the next half hour or so, bent over searching for small stones. After they've amassed a substantial pile, Dragon begins to construct the circle. She instructs the boy to continue searching for rocks. As the 18 year old grabs each rock, she mutters the three spells over each one before carefully placing it in the circle. Several minutes later, the circle is complete, sans one rock, which Dragon places near the gap it's to fill.

"Now we fill it with kindling," the boy asks, remembering their earlier conversation, "right?"

"Right" Dragon confirms, "Well, what are you just standing there for? We've got to collect that kindling."

It only takes about ten minutes or so before Dragon decides that they've accumulated a sufficient amount of wood and brush. She tells the kid to arrange the materials in way that will encourage the fire to burn. While he does that, Dragon signals their location to Blue Fox with a whistle; using a pre-arranged series of tones.

Not ten minutes later, Blue arrives. She is holding a bleeding, but still alive, rabbit in her arms. The lad takes one look at Blue and blanches.

"Do," the boy nervously asks, swallowing, "Do we have to use that as bait?"

"It's the only bait guaranteed to attract twig blights," Dragon somberly replies, "Sorry."

"Do we have to trap the twig blights, then?" the boy cries.

"Now that they've gotten a taste for human flesh; yes." Dragon answers, again refusing to look the kid in the eye.

"We've got to finish setting the trap, now." Blue reminds them.

"Right" Dragon softly responds.

Dragon moves back towards the circle. Blue carries the hare over to the trap. She places the rabbit into the circle. The moment Blue lets go, Dragon places the final stone into the circle, and mutters on final spell. As she does so the circle of rocks briefly lights up. But the flash of light fades almost instantaneously.

"Let's get out of here." Dragon murmurs as she stares down at the doomed rabbit.

The next day, the three of them, Dragon Jacket, Blue Fox and the boy, head out to the site of the trap. When they get there they find the circle burnt, with nothing but ashes and charcoal left inside of it. Dragon casts her twig blight identifying spell. She discovers nothing. The twig blights have been killed.

After discovering that they have been successful, Dragon bends down, by the circle, and casts reversal spells on the trap. After she does so, she begins to take some of the stones and casts them away from the location of the circle. Blue joins her in the dispersing of the stones. When all of the rocks are gone, the trio heads back into the town to report to Jakope Narmer that the twig blights are gone. For their actions, Dragon and Blue are awarded a small, but decent sized monetary reward. The boy is tasked by the town heads, to go to the local city and report the loss of their local hero, and return with a new one.


	18. Just When you Forgot This was a OUAT Fic

**Reminder, I don't own Once Upon a Time. But most of the story, I do actually :). Also, reviews motivate me. The more reviews I get the more likely I am to update sooner. I'm looking at you my less then 10 followers!**

* * *

Blue Fox falls asleep feeling content and secure. Emma Swan wakes up feeling considerably worse. Today is the day she will be taking a pregnancy test. Her stomach feels funny. She's unsure as to whether that's do to nerves, or the pregnancy. _It's got to be nerves_. She thinks to herself, _It'll do me no good to think negatively about this. Oh, who am I kidding, I'm probably fucking pregnant._

The day starts exactly like every other day in prison has. At least until she hits breakfast. Halfway through the bland meal, Emma bolts up from her seat. She barely makes it to a nearby trash can before what little breakfast she had consumed makes a re-appearance. The other prisoners briefly look her way, before returning to their food. After a few minutes Emma manages to stop heaving. She returns to her seat, but the sight of her remaining breakfast nearly makes her resume dry-heaving.

The next, who knows how long, goes by. Emma misses it all, overwhelmed by feelings of self-pity and despair. This is only interrupted when a guard presents her with a pregnancy test. She uses it. When the results come in, Emma stares down at the stick, a feeling of horror begins to overwhelm her. It's positive. She's pregnant.

The guard interrupts Emma's darkening thoughts. She shows Emma an envelope. The guard pulls something out of the envelope.

"It looks like when you get out of here, you're going to have a car, and a baby." The guard comments as she pulls keys out of the envelope.

They're the keys to the bug Emma met Neal in. _He's giving me the bug?_ Emma thinks, _What the Fuck? Why, why would he do that?_ Anger starts to build up in Emma, only to be quelled by her despair, and depression. Suddenly she no longer has the energy to do anything, let alone be angry.

At some point someone tells Emma about a doctor's appointment she has to see how far along she is. Someone, possibly the same person informs her that she'll soon be moved to a private cell, because of the pregnancy. Someone says something, but Emma has since stopped registering any of it. Her entire world has shrunk to the little stick with the plus sign in her hand. And soon she stops seeing that too.

Emma Swan's entire world has gone black. Then, she's opening her eyes. But it hurts. There's a beeping sound. Where is she? She tries to open her eyes again. This time she can make out details of the world around her. She's in a hospital room. Someone is banging a hammer into her head. It's pounding.

"Glad to see you awaken." A man in lab coat says. His voice makes her head hurt worse.

"What..." Emma croaks out, "What happened?"

"You fainted, and hit your head on the way down." The man answers.

"How, how long" Emma stutters as she works her way back into consciousness, "How long have I been out?"

"Only about an hour and a half. I just want to check for a concussion, and then you'll be free to go."

"Right, thanks"

A few minutes later, with a slight concussion diagnosis, Emma is discharged from the infirmary. She is given some Tylenol and led back to her cell. At some point, Emma thinks she leaves the cell to eat dinner in the mess hall, but she's not completely sure.

Emma Swan vaguely process wishing her cell mate a good night before drifting off to sleep. Blue Fox wakes up, and snuggles deeper into Dragon Jacket's arms, desperately needing comforting.

* * *

Dragon awakens to the sensation of Blue burrowing deeper into Dragon's embrace. She grins to herself as she hugs Blue tighter. Whether she does so because she can sense Blue's desperation or for the selfish reason that she enjoys having her love snuggled up against her is unclear, even to Dragon.

"Morning" Dragon murmurs to Blue.

"Can we just stay here, cuddled like this for a while?" Blue asks in a quiet voice.

"Sure" Dragon responds as she absentmindedly brushes a few stray hairs out of her best friend's face. She lies there, content with the world for a moment, then it occurs to her, "Are you okay?"

Blue hesitates for a moment, before replying in the affirmative. Dragon doesn't believe her, but lets the matter rest. After a few minutes of cuddling on the bed together, Blue reluctantly untangles herself from Dragon. Her bladder has become impossible to ignore, and Blue has discovered that she has an urgent need to empty it.

A little more than an hour and a half later, Blue and Dragon are in the kitchen, cleaning up from their breakfast. Dragon asks Blue if there's anything in particular that she wants to do today. Blue replies that all she really wants to do is cuddle. Dragon, is happy to comply, but this reply makes her worried for her friend's mental state. The day before it had seemed almost as if the old, pre-broken heart Blue was back, and now? Dragon had no idea.

A few minutes later, Dragon is sitting on the couch with one leg lying straight across it, and the other dangling over the side. Blue has situated herself between Dragon's legs. Her head is resting on Dragon's chest. Dragon has one arm wrapped around Blue's torso; that hand entwined with one of Blue's. Dragon's other hand is lightly stroking Blue's hair.

At first they sit there with a comfortable silence between them. At some point, one of the girls strikes up a casual conversation, largely about past adventures. After a while, there's a lull in the conversation. In the new silence, Blue's previous thoughts about how she knows little about her friend return.

"Dragon," Blue tilts her head to be able to see her friend's better, "Tell me something else about yourself. I still know so little. Maybe another story, since it is a new day. You said only one story at a time, this is a new time."

After a long moment of silence Dragon speaks up. "My family name was Mintz." **[1]**

"Was?"

"I lost my family when I was seven, that's what I was running from when I met that dragon. I forsake my family name afterwards, because of the pain it reminded me of. When I choice my name, it had/has nothing to do with True Name."

"And here I was, thinking that you had been raised in a hero school." Blue admits.

"Considering how competent I already was when we first met, what on Imontar made you think I was trained in a hero school?" Dragon replies with fresh humor in her voice.

"I made one mistake when I first left!" Blue answers, getting defensive and mock insulted. She rises slightly from Dragon's chest to face her better.

"And if I hadn't been there, it would have been your last!"

Blue replies by sticking her tongue out. Dragon chuckle's at her friend's antics. Blue then huffs with false indignation before snuggling back into Dragon's chest.

* * *

 **[1] Yes, you have heard/read the family name Mintz before.  
**


	19. Short by Ten

**Not having any review is disheartening, and demotivating. I have a one shot, for a fandom no one has fucking heard of with twice as many reviews this story has, and they're all from different people!**

* * *

For the first few days after fighting the twig blights, Dragon Jacket and Blue Fox fell back into the routine that they had developed before hand. However, both were starting to feel a little antsy and a desire to leave the cave home, and go do something, was beginning to rise up in both of them.

"Let's go on a journey!" Blue suggests just shy of a week after defeating the twig blights. A journey being a general term used to describe when heroes go out and journey, typically in no general direction, for an arbitrary length of time, looking for whatever trouble or jobs they manage to come across.

"Ye-Are you sure that you're up to it?" Dragon asks.

"Yes, I'm sure!"

"Well, is there anywhere in particular that you wish to journey?"

"No, is there any other town near here that isn't Nort?"

"There's another one about an hour or two away." Dragon responds.

"So, we can start there, and follow the main road from there?" Blue states, as a question.

"Pack today, and leave early tomorrow?"

"Sounds good"

* * *

The next morning finds the girls standing just outside Dragon Jacket's cave; full from breakfast, and ready to begin their journey. Both Dragon, and Blue Fox are sporting backpacks that are almost overflowing with some changes of clothing, a few days' worth of food and water, some scrolls with information (different information in accordance to the two's differing priorities), sleeping rolls, individual fire-starting kits and, of course, weapons. Well, most of the weapons are in fact hidden on various locations on their bodies.

"So," Blue playfully questions, "Are we going to go straight to that other nearby town, or are you going to waste an hour or so again going in circles and claim that we're not lost, you're just being ridiculously 'secure'."

Dragon rolls her eyes before answering with, "It took less than an hour to reach Nort; I wasn't lost; we'll be going straight, which should take about an hour and a half."

"You were totally lost the other day."

Dragon decides to not respond with a verbal response, but by simply beginning to walk off towards the town Bergnin, which contains the Inn Olim.

"Hey!" Blue cries, "Don't leave me here!" She races a couple of steps to catch up to her friend.

"If I'm going to get lost anyway, what should it matter?" Dragon smirks at her friend.

An hour and a half later finds the friends at the outskirts of the town discussing whether to go the Inn, the town hall, or skip Bergnin all-together. As they enter the town proper, they decide to pop their heads into Olim. They're nearly through the door when Blue, aloud, realizes that she recognizes the place. Dragon just chuckles at her friend.

They enter the tavern, which despite the sunlight streaming through the handful of windows is fairly dimly lit. The room is almost empty, which considering the time of morning, isn't too surprising. The girls take a few steps into the room when the bar keep speaks up.

"Can I get you girls anything?"

"Some information, if you've got it." Blue answers.

"What kind of information are you looking far?" he asks.

"My name's Dragon Jacket, and this is my friend and partner, Blue Fox." Dragon enters the conversation, "We're heroes for hire, and we were hoping you could recommend a way for use to start off our latest journey."

The bar keep nods, "I've heard of you girls, and the stories aren't half bad. And yeah, I thin' I can help you two out."

"Really!" Blue exclaims, "That's great, thank you."

"Not so fast," the bar keep grins, his teeth are yellow and a bit gapped, "I don't do anything far free."

"But we, just want some information so that we can help people!" Blue sputters.

"You don't help them for free, do yah?"

"Well… sometimes yes!"

"What do you want?" Dragon says firmly as she re-enters the conversation.

The bar keep lets out a small and quick chuckle, "Now you're talkin' my language."

"What do you want?" Dragon repeats, sounding a bit more impatient this time.

"Fifty Quads"

"Fifty Quads!" Blue gasps with disbelief "We're not made of fucking money!"

"Then I don't got no valid information." The bar keep smirks.

"Twenty" Dragon responds, "If, if the information is valid, you keep it. If not, we're returning to take our money back, as forcibly as possible."

The bar keep gulps, "Twenty is plenty!"

"I thought it would be. Now, what's your information?"

"Can, can I have my, my twenty quad f-first?"

Dragon sighs before removing back pack. She sets it down on the bar before taking about 20-30 seconds to rifle through it. Dragon then removes a money pouch from the pack. She removes a small handful of coins from the pouch, and drops them on the counter.

Dragon grabs the bar keep's shirt caller, "information, NOW!"

"Okay! Okay!" the bar keep exclaims. "So for the past couple of weeks or so, a number of traveling patrons have mentioned that the nearby town of Nue Windor has been having trouble with a vampire as of late. They're only about two days of travel on foot if you take the south road out of here, and apparently they have a reword of sixty quads currently set for anyone who can help them!"

"Thank you" Dragon replies as she returns the pouch to her pack and her pack to her back. She and Blue turn and leave the Inn. Just as they exit the door…

"This is only ten quads!" the bar keep yells from behind them.

Blue and Dragon share a look and a grin before taking off running towards the town of Nue Windor and the vampire; laughing.

* * *

 **I'm considering having a short crossover, of sorts, with Xena: Warrior Princess. What do think. Do you people want to see Xena and Gabrielle make a cameo for a couple of chapters?  
**

 **Please review please, please, pleeeaaaassssee! :(**


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